"Chris Huff" wrote:
> they would only return a component at a time.
> (vrotate_x(px, py, pz, rx, ry, rz), vaxis_rotate_y(), etc...

Ough!

> > What I would prefer is to deform a mesh just like I would
> > deform a point. I find that it couldn't be more simple and
> > intuitive than this. Could a deform function be made to
> > work the same way?
>
> Not without a substantial amount of work...basically
> replicating the functionality of isosurface functions for
> vectors and writing code to parse stuff that looks like
> POV-Script on the fly. If this was easy or even just a
> bit difficult, don't you think it would have been done
> already for isosurface functions?

But isosurfaces and meshes are completely different things!
Isosurfaces are fields defined for every point in space. A surface is
created wherever the field equals a certain value. Meshes are completely
different. There's no field, there's just a bunch of points in space
connected by triangles.

For isosurfaces it makes sense to change the field values by using functions
that return floats.

For meshes it makes sense to directly move the vector points by using
functions that return vectors.

> it should be possible to make a version of functions that
> handles only vectors, but it seems like an unnecessary
> inconsistency with the float version, and you likely
> wouldn't be able to use the two together.

But it's two completely different things! It wouldn't make sense to make
them consistent or to use them together.

> And if you really want to use a macro, you could always read
> the data from the mesh, do what you want with it using a
> macro, and create a new mesh with it.

Err Chris, that's what I'm already doing. This whole thread origins from my
message in povray.binaries.animations with an example of a mesh deformed by
a macro. But I was discussing with ABX if a patch could do it as easily and
flexibly (to the user) as a macro.

Seems that it can't...

Rune
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