Hello:

 I've been digging through forum messages and looking for this but I havent'
seen an exact hit.

 I'm trying to do a 'space elevator' animation from high orbit, down to the
ground in one shot.

 The curvature of the earth at the start point will be visible, but I want
to have a height field at lower elevations so that you can see the terrain
getting closer.

  I have some height fields that will work (large image maps from 3DEM), but
of course they are 'flat'.

  I could warp the height fields to be spherical I guess, but I"m worried
that the range of the grayscale TGA will cause a problem as the 'edge' dips
down.

  In a related issue, I was trying to wrap a heightfield around the inside
of a hollow cylinder to do an O'Neil colony.

  In both of these cases, I guess I could use an iso surface, but I'd have
to figure out the function, and a bigger issue is that I would have very
long rendering times.  For an animation this would kill me.

  Does anyone have any thoughts on something faster?

        == John ==

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