wrote in message news:web.3e7a7baa935d6ddb99c6fd670@news.povray.org...
> Hi,
>
> I'm new to POVRay and am struggling with something. Is there a way to
create
> rolling hills if you have specific X/Y coordinates where you want the tops
> of
> the hills and the lowest points of the troughs to be? I'd also like to
make
> them specific heights and want the surface to smoothly transition from
each
> peak to each trough and on to the next hill or trough.
<snip>

Bicubic patches would be a good bet. They will meet all your requirements,
but you will have to roll your own code for determining the control points
that will smoothly transition the surface across the peaks and valleys. The
theory of bicubic patches is available through googling on "bezier patch"
and/or "bicubic patch".

I'd be interested in what you find out. I've got a similar problem
(stretching skin over a shoulder girdle where the base of neck, point of
shoulder and chest wall can rotate independently). But I'm weak in
trigonometry  (I'm now working through a refresher course).

As others have pointed out, meshes and height fields would also work. But it
seems to me that before you could do much with either of those approaches,
you would need to charaterize some of the intermediate points, which would
force you into the same kind of math involved in bicubics. My suspicion is
that the bicubic patch will be the most direct route from your data to an
image.


--
Will Woodhull
Thornhenge, SW Oregon, USA
willl.at.thornhenge.net

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