POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.programming : Isosurface-to-mesh : Re: Isosurface-to-mesh Server Time
29 Jul 2024 02:26:40 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Isosurface-to-mesh  
From: Ben Birdsey
Date: 23 Jul 1999 16:10:25
Message: <3798CA39.3C77C608@unlgrad1.unl.edu>
The highest cost in rendering blobs, isosurfaces, or any other procedurally
defined surface is performing intersection tests for rays that miss the object. 
This is why turning them into a mesh is such a cool idea.  I mean the
intersection test is dead simple, and anyone who is serious about rendering
speed already has tons of memory!

	But let me toss in another suggestion that might short-circuit the critics AND
keep the speed advantage.  Let's compute the mesh and use it as a bounding
surface (i.e. we are 99.5% sure that the isosurface totally inside this mesh). 
And, you could just render the mesh for test renders.  This will totally reduce
the number wasted calculations, and keep the beauty of the isosurfaces at al
resolutions!

	BUT I know that there are some guys out there thinking, "why not use the usual
bounding boxes?"  The big deal about isosurfaces and blobs is the easy way you
can model "organic" shapes and seamlessly connected objects.  Well, it seems to
me like these objects are full of holes or have tubes stucking out of them, so
the bounding box ends up being 60-80% empty, and you waste 60-80% of your
expensive intersection tests!

	Just an idea!

	In Him,
	Ben


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