I'm brand new 'round these parts, and I'm afraid I have a ton of questions
that are probably really basic.  Here's the first of what will probably be
many:

I'm working on a rendering that will feature surface detail on a sphere,
similar to the way a cylinder (of opposing color) would intersect that
sphere.
At the moment, I'm using this basic format:

#declare thingie = union {
   intersection {
   cylinder {<-4,0,-20>,<-4,0,-10>,4}
   sphere {<0,0,0>,15}
   pigment {rgb <.6,.6,.8>}
   sphere {<0,0,0>,15
   clipped_by {cylinder {<-4,0,-20>,<-4,0,-10>,4 inverse}}
   pigment {rgb <1,1,1>}
   }

That's probably not quite accurate, but I hope you get the idea.  I'm
guessing that POV-Ray is able to do this (namely, putting a dot exactly on
the sphere's surface) in one step rather than in a pair of
"intersection/clipped_by" statements.

Does this make sense?  Can anyone suggest a more streamlined method to
accomplish the same thing?  I intend to use more complicated interplays than
circle-and-cylinder, and my current route seems largely redundant.  I'm also
not
really interested in image mapping as a solution, since I'd rather stick
with
simple geometric forms at this point.

Thanks to anyone who can offer any insight.

     Dave!

Post a reply to this message