P Brewer schrieb:
> 
> Question for you, how do you control blobs into such a defined shape? =) I
> always considered them limited to "organic" shapes and myself have virtually
> never used them. But with what you are doing, they look quite powerful.

I'm not sure yet. I'm still learning (you might also say "toying around").

One thing I did was write macros to get a different parameterization for 
the blob components. As my initial goal was no more than to get a 
rounded transition between cylinders, I wrote blob macros that allowed 
me to specify the "idle" radius of the blob component (i.e. the radius 
it will have when not anywhere near another component) and the distance 
from its "idle" surface to its limit of influence (to directly control 
the size of the transition region).

Apparently this must be a quite intuitive blob parameterization scheme, 
as I'm surprised myself how quickly I got good results not only for the 
smokestack, but also for the sandboxes, by basically just experimenting 
with the parameters.


> I applaud your detail and devotion to an sdl-only model. I'm trying to keep my
> in process IRTC entry sdl and I sometimes think that whipping out the 3D modeler
> would make some things a lot easier. There's something magical about a detailed
> complex model that is built using pure sdl.

Well, actually I'm more of a mesh-model person normally, using SDL only 
for quite simple models. And usually I don't even model the mesh objects 
from scratch, but just customize 3rd party models to fit my needs.

In this case, however, I feel that I'd be lost with this approach, 
because I expect to need a close-up of the engine, at a detail level 
that a pre-fabricated mesh-based model could probably provide only at a 
humongous polygon count.

I might have attempted to try selectively adding detail to an existing 
mesh model in the areas I intend to show close-up - but here's another 
problem: I'm not really sure yet what perspective to settle on. And 
given the highly technical, non-organic structures of a steam engine, 
being basically an assortment of cylinders, pipes, bars and bolts, I 
figured it would actually be easier to pull this off using CSG.

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