Invisible wrote:
> scott wrote:
> 
>> I don't understand the fascination with perfect mathematically 
>> described surfaces, they are inflexible and slow to render.
> 
> Really? I was under the impression that splines can describe any 
> possible surface. Triangles, on the other hand, can only give a crude 
> approximation to curves.

This is not true.  Just like triangles splines can only approximate most 
curves, they just give a different approximation.


Back to the initial topic -- the main reason why I like the ability to 
support arbitrary surfaces is that isosufraces are such a useful 
modeling tool.  Sure you could always tessilate them to triangles, but I 
don't think that doing so correctly, quickly, and automatically is that 
easy of a problem -- particularly if you want to treat the normals 
correctly.

Of course if you have a really nice modeler the added value of 
isosurfaces is less, so it makes sense to go with a pure-triangle 
approach.  For a text-based editor like Povray, however, I think having 
a larger vocabulary of surfaces is extremely handy.

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