You don't really need a full heap of dust.
You could just have an adequate shape (made with height field for 
example) and scatter some small elements on it's surface to give a 
powder like look.

But for flour I would expect that it would be possible to do it with a 
isosurface even with a height field generated after an isosurface (wich 
would make it faster) and with a proper texture.

JC

Andrew wrote:
> You could make a real pile of powder with trace if you have the memory
> for it.  All you'd really need to do is drop your particles at random
> according to a distribution that made them prefer to fall in the centre
> of the pile, and make sure you make them small enough that you can't see
> that they haven't settled down in a realistic way.
> 
> I imagine someone will be able to come up with a more elegant solution
> with texturing or isosurfaces though...
> 
> 
> 
> "Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom> wrote in message
> news:3d9c76a7@news.povray.org...
> 
>>Does anyone out there have any bright ideas about how to make a pile
> 
> of
> 
>>powder? I can make a pile shape, but how do you make it look
> 
> "powdery"? I'm
> 
>>looking for something amorphus, like flour.
>>
>>So far, the best thing I can come up with is an isosurface featuring
> 
> the
> 
>>basic shape x^2 + y^2 - z (is that a parabola or a hyperbola? I always
> 
> get
> 
>>those confused!) plus a little bit of f_wrinkles(x, y, z), which works
>>suprisingly well (with a fairly matt finish{} block). Can anyone else
> 
> do
> 
>>better? (My isosurface requires max_gradient 60, which isn't too bad I
>>guess...)
>>
>>Oh, and later in the scene I might need some crystalline powder -
> 
> hopefully
> 
>>that should be easier... (Any ideas folks?)
>>
>>Thanks!
>>Andrew.
>>
>>
>>
> 
> 
>

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