Ron Parker <ron### [at] povrayorg> wrote:
: Depends on your definition of "necessary."

  Well, suppose that we have two meshes consisting of 1 million triangles
each and we make an intersection of them. In the intersection only 10
triangles are visible.
  We can:
  a) Calculate a mesh which is the resulting intersection. This mesh would
take something like 15-20 triangles.
  b) Leave the meshes be and use just regular CSG intersection.

  In the case a) we need memory for 15-20 triangles. In case b) we need
memory for 2 million triangles (1999990 of them not affecting the scene
in any way (except slowing the render)).

: Besides, when did we start worrying about memory consumption?

  It is an important issue. I think that's the reason why copying a mesh
has been optimized to take as less memory as possible :)

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):_;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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