TigerHawk <Tig### [at] sitcnet> wrote:
: I was reading up in 3D Graphics and Animatino (@ Barnes and Nobles) and
: thumbed through a section the described actually denting the surface of
: an object, unlike a normal map which just simulates this effect. Bump
: maps are wonderful, but sometimes I need something a little more. For
: example, sometimes I need real water. I've been told many ways to get
: around bump maps (ie using height fields, etc), but I was wondering if
: anything was planned in POV-Ray's future, or if anything did, in fact,
: exist, that did physically indent the surface. I realize this would slow
: down rendering time (by quite a lot in some cases), but it would be a
: nice feature when needed....

  I can think only two ways to achieve this:

  1) Making non-linear transformations to the rays. This would be wonderful
but hardly possible.
  2) Creating thousands or millions of triangles around the object. It may
work, but it would require lots of memory. Also placing triangles on the
surface of mathematical objects is a non-trivial task.

  Don't forget that povray models mathematical surfaces. It doesn't model
polygons like scanline renderers do.

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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