I think that one of the next useful POV-Tree features could be
polygonized/tesselated blob model.

A tree generated by TOMTREE macro is a blob tree. The whole
tree is just one blob. As a result all roots, trunk, branches and
twigs have smooth transition from one element to another. The
idea is to generate POV-Ray mesh object which could look the
same way as blob tree - with smooth transitions between elements.
Changing mesh accuracy it would be possible to define how close
mesh mimics its blob counterpart.

POV-Tree uses the same algorithm as TOMTREE to generate
tree model. The whole tree is represented in POV-Tree as an array
of Blob objects. Blob object in turn has three attributes:

blob center - x, y, z coordinates
blob radius
blob strength (not used in POV-Tree)

So, my first question is - which additional attribute(s) I should
include to the Blob object so that it would work like POV-Ray blob?
What kind of attributes are used for POV-Ray's blob object. Does
every blob keep own transformation matrix?

Next question is about algorithm used in POV-Ray to construct
blob's isosurface. Where can I get a reference to it? Is it marching
cubes?

As far as I understand I need one algorithm/formula for making
isosurface itself and another one for polygonizing that surface.
Is it so?

I'm not familiar with POV-Ray source files and I appreciate any
additional info regarding this subject (preferably on-line).

Googling gave me the following pages:
http://www.cfxweb.net/~aggrav8d/tutorials/metaballs.html
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/modelling/polygonise/
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/modelling/implicitsurf/
http://www.geisswerks.com/ryan/BLOBS/blobs.html
http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~hkankaan/Homepages/metaballs.html

Just in case it's not clear what I need here are some pretty Java
applets demonstrating what I want to achieve:

http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~gw235/main.php
http://v3ga.free.fr/Java/Metaballs_2D/index.htm

Thanks in advance!

Gena.

Post a reply to this message