On Wed, 30 Jun 1999 23:56:43 -0400, Lummox JR wrote:
>Perhaps there might be a flag in an element to prevent it from blending
>textures?

I don't think you could.  How would you color the "neck" that connects
two components?  It's not really a part of either component.

>Actually, it seems to me that a decent tree would need the leaves to be
>something separate anyway, since there's little point in blending in the
>leaf shape with the branch shape. Two separate isoblobs would do the
>trick... but how would that be built via a macro?

I think you'd just need two macros.  One that generates the branch 
structure and puts blobby elements where the branches would be, and one
that generates the same branch structure and puts blobby elements where
the leaves would be.

>All idle speculation at this point. I can do only limited work on the
>isoblob idea this week, and anyway I've only *just* begun to look into
>the idea. But it's an idea that I *really* like.

Another idea, and one that might be better able to leverage the blob code:
add an isosurface component to the existing blob syntax.  Then you can use
the existing blob algorithms when the only components in range are the usual
spherical and cylindrical ones, and kick it into repeated-subdivision mode
only when there's a complex component in range, passing the existing 
isosurface code a custom-made function that is the sum of the functions for 
the relevant components.  Ideally, you'd find some way to cache the 
custom-made function for a while in case the same set of components gets hit 
again soon, but that's just an implementation detail.

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