DJ Wiza wrote:
>You really can't put an isosurface to a wireframe.  You could create
>approximations using an algorithm such as the marching cubes algorithm, but
>it wouldn't be perfect.
>
>I was once working on a macro that approximated an isosurface using a slight
>variant of the marching cubes algorithm, but never quite finished it.
>Parsing would take an extremely long time, especially if you wanted it to be
>really accurate.  But the result would render very quickly compared to the
>original isosurface.
>
>-DJ

What are marching cubes?

I like modeling with isosurfaces, but less for the use of equations to make
shapes than for its height field like feature of being able to take an
image map, a picture I've drawn in Corel photopaint, or drawn with a pencil
and scanned. The problem with the height field is that it's always "flat."
Now, a height field looks like a wire frame too up close. Also, the basic
idea of using grey scale values as z values should be easy to implement.
What's needed is a way to bend, cut, join, and otherwise manipulate the
wire frames produced.

Drawing grey scale picture is a hell of a lot more efficient way of
generating a limited type of 3D data than trying to grab vertices with a
mouse and move them around in modelers like hamanapatch and what not.

Is there a way you could make height fields more flexible? Make it so you
can bend, wrap, join height field into a 3D object, like a head or skull?

Is what I'm asking clear?

Don't tell me a height field isn't a wireframe internally... It doesn't
matter, a grey scale picture should certainly easily become a wireframe.

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