In article <3a9fd51c@news.povray.org>, "Rune" <run### [at] inamecom> 
wrote:

> In MegaPov there's a pigment function feature which converts a 
> pigment to a function. However, functions return floats, not vectors, 
> so it really would be more logic if it took a pattern as input. I 
> suspect that the only reason it takes a pigment as input is that 
> patterns - for some reason - can't currently be declared.

That isn't the reason...before the spline_wave patch, the advantage of 
pigments was that you could modify the pattern with a different 
color_map. Now that is irrelevant, though, since you can use a 
spline_wave as a float_map.


> So, there a lots of reasons to make it possible to declare patterns.
> Is there any specific reason that patterns can't be declared?

Not really...I've often thought that the syntax you describe would be 
better. And this issue has been discussed before...another area that 
would benefit is normals: MegaPOV now transforms the "bumps" along with 
the pattern, which is often desired but sometimes not what you wanted, a 
pattern{} block could be used to specify pattern-specific transforms.
I've recently figured out how to declare things, so I'll probably make 
an attempt at this feature, it shouldn't be too difficult. The only 
problem is that the "pattern" keyword is already used, but it's current 
use is pretty unintuitive. (The "pattern" image type, which creates an 
image from a pigment..."pigment_image" would be a better choice, in my 
opinion. I don't think changing it would cause a lot of trouble...)

-- 
Christopher James Huff
Personal: chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg, http://tag.povray.org/

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