>   I'm posting this here as I have a hunch what I'm looking for can't be
> done in official POV-Ray.  I'm looking for any hint, tips, etc. in creating
> a procedural texture for huge space-station-type objects.

Hmm.  Let's see. I think I may be able to help you. :)

>  I have tried the HullTexture posted a while ago by (I think) H.E.Day
> (crackle with metric 1)
> but it doesn't work for the shapes I'm using.

Yeah, that's mine.

>  I'd like to be able to have the texture surface wrap around stretched torii,
> spheres, _and_ bicubic
> patches created in SPatch.  I'm looking in the procedural direction because
> the texture needs to be clear no matter how far or close the camera is.

Some thing you might want to look at:
The warp {shape} (where shape is a spherical, toroidal, or cylindrical warp)
Put this at the end of the pigment statement.  A word of warning, however.  You
MUST decrease the scale of the pigment before doing this.  For example:
scale <1,1,1/200>
warp {cylindrical}

will rotate the texture 200 times around the y axis.  If you have a long,
slight tubular spaceship to texture, you might consider this.

Also, Just leaving the texture "as is" (scaled perhaps <1,1,2>) is perfectly
cool and normal.  The look may be a bit confused (instead of just rectangles,
you get all sorts of polys) but you may grow to love it.

One thing I just though of:  Using the cylindrical warp with a model will
probably yield a "tightness" in the bow and aft.  To fix this, try this:

texture {
cylindrical
texture_map {
[.6667 Cylindrical_Texture_You_Made_Above]
[.75 Duplicate_Texture_Without_Cylindrial_Warp]
}
rotate 90*x //assumes the ship is oriented on the z axis
scale 2*z  //enhances the "sleekness" of the texture
}
Oh, one more thing:  for the two colors (or more) used in the HullTexture
pigment statement, make one a rust, i.e. <.8,.75,.7> and another a bluish
<.7,.75,.8> color.  This will add a great deal of sheer "character" to the
ship.


Do try to mess around with the ideas above.  They should yield rather
impressive results.



--
H.E. Day

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