Christopher James Huff wrote:

>> Just tell my why I should use "intelligence" doing complicated
>> viewport and culling calculations (think of animations) which require
>> a separate mesh include file for each frame if the problem could be
>> delt with in an easier and (as I think) more elegant way?
> 
> I never mentioned viewport calculations or culling. It doesn't require
> huge amounts of work...just don't use high resolution meshes where low
> res meshes are adequate.
> 
The alternative is to use 100 million triangles. 
95% will be useless but the foreground needs needs the fine grid. 

Either smart "intelligent" mixed-resolution meshes with (at least 
primitive) viewport culling or a very fine mesh is required. 
OR, subdivision at render time. 
Anything else?

>> > A binary mesh format would make loading
>> > high-res meshes faster.
>> ...and smaller on HD.
> 
> Really, who cares about file size? It is only an issue when transferring
> files. I view it as simply a side effect of using a format more
> convenient for fast loading.
> 
When rendering films, file size gets interesting, especially if you 
need a separate mesh for each frame. And when rendering the film in 
a distributed environment the issue is transferring the meshes. 

But that's not the major issue we're talking about here. 

>>   This means, if you use a very deep scene (fly along a valley),
>>   it would produce nice scenery from a low/med-resolution mesh
>>   with constant grid size.
> 
> Which could be done just as well before rendering.
> 
Which results in a 100 million triangle mesh.
Or requires some "intelligent" mixed-resolution mesh and triangle culling. 
AND it requires knowledge of the camera position which means that a 
separate mesh is needed for each frame. 

Oh dear... we're back at the beginning. 

I don't know if you never tried to put up a POV camera in a topography 
mesh valley and looked at all the ugly triangles in the foreground. 
Only solution (without patching POVRay) I see is doing some really 
non-trivial calculations on the input topography data extracting a 
mesh with fine grid in foreground and larger grid in the background. 

Wolfgang

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