I fully agree.  Some purists will probably flame me for saying so.  ;-)
Then if you mix this with the ability to put a frame-rendering loop in
POV code (to avoid parsing and tesselating for each frame), POV has the
potential to do some very high-speed animation.

-Nathan

TonyB wrote:
> 
> It definitely needs to be done. I propose a new syntax for objects to be made
> effective in version 5.0 (seeing as version 3.5 is just an official
> superpatch, and 4.0 is just a c++ rewrite). My suggested syntax is as
> follows:
> 
> (example)
> 
> [before]
> sphere {location, radius[, strength] texture}
> 
> [new syntax]
> sphere
> {
>  location, radius[, strength] texture
>  triangles on smoothen on
>  resolution N (or) resolution <x,y,z>
> }
> 
> These three new commands would be made available to all pov objects. The
> 'triangles on' and 'smooth on' would be operated like 'hollow on' and other
> similar instructions. The idea is that with 'triangles on' we tell pov to
> forget about making the sphere like it used to and make it out of triangles,
> using methods like Uwe Zimmerman has implemented. 'smoothen on' should be
> self-explanatory. The 'resolution [N]/[<x,y,z>]' is meant to tell pov to make
> the object out of N triangles, or to break it down into <x,y,z> pieces (like
> Chris Colefax's explode.inc) and figure the triangles from that (I don't know
> which option would be better, or if both could be implemented). The idea of
> the triangle system is both to decrease rendering times, and to make the 3d
> accelaration video cards of use to pov users. Also, this allows for
> deformations like bend, twist, vortex, and displacement mapping, and so much
> more, without having to do it through the isosurface patch. The benefit of
> this being optional is that without the flags set to on, pov proceeds the
> older, slower, more precise, less memory-consuming methods that we know and
> love today. Please comment on the do-ability of this.
> 
> --
> Anthony L. Bennett
> http://welcome.to/TonyB
> 
> Graphics rendered
> by the Dreamachine.

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