Once again, I must comment :)

>thousands of spheres (using Biowin) , and from my experience there's *no
>way* that I'd be able to use more than a few hundred spheres in a mesh
based
>program. As far as I'm concerned, it's the use of mathematically defined

Well actually I've done a scene with over 5 million triangles and it wasn't
that bad.  Actually just the other day I imported a protein model of 5000 or
so atoms and connections and it didn't really have a problem (took a few
minutes to load initially but after that there were no problems).

> it is both faster and less memory intensive to create. 3ds max to create
> an equivalent smooth sphere without using surface normal smoothing
> requires 1000's of triangles to represent

Very true for POV-Ray's architecture.  POV-Ray just wasn't meant to load
millions of triangles.  The number of triangles I usually use for a
geosphere (not a sphere, a geosphere, which is much more optimal) is about
200-800 or above if I need extra smoothness of the camera is particularly
close.  If it's a variable range thing, I just make the sphere a NURBS
surface and let the renderer figure it out :)

But of course once again, it depends on the program.  And once again, I must
say that I think POV-Ray should be left as it is.

--
Lance.


---
For the latest 3D Studio MAX plug-ins, images and much more, go to:
The Zone - http://come.to/the.zone
For a totally different experience, visit my Chroma Key Website:
Colorblind - http://listen.to/colorblind

Post a reply to this message