Ron Parker wrote:

> >You may want to consider polygon approximations rather than the native curves.
> >The computation is slower but it is already solved.
> 
> This is what I expected to hear anyway.  All is not lost, though - it's not
> that hard to approximate the bevels with a bunch of smooth_triangles.  It's
> just a question of whether it's worth it to put something like that in POV
> when there are already external programs that do it so well.

Due to the popularity of the text object in POV-Ray I have little doubt
that there would be a large and appreciative following for this feature.
The limitation with outside text utilities is for the most part the fact
they are usualy triangle meshes which add greatly to scene file size and
do not work or work well in CSG operations. Elefont is a great tool for
what it does but the meshes it produces are seldom well behaved and would
never be reliable in CSG operations if Nathans triangle patch does make
it into the official version. Too many holes in the objects and flipped
normals. If the smooth triangle were generated in POV-Ray at least the
mesh portion of the font would act in a well behaved manner and POV
could keep track of the inside and outside of the object in CSG operations.


-- 
Ken Tyler -  1300+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

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