In article <3c7788f5@news.povray.org>, "Hugo" <hua### [at] post3teledk> 
wrote:

> > (of course I know sphere sweeps are slow in nature).
> 
> I wonder why spheresweeps exsist in POV at all.. I may sound negative, but
> these shapes can be achieved with cones and render much quicker! I know that
> extra memory is required, but then .... wouldn't it be possible to code an
> internal "repeating-cones" algoritm in POV ... actually a function that just
> repeats any shape, following a user defined path / formula, *without*
> storing all points in memory first. This would be useful in many cases.

As others have mentioned: memory. Take a curved sweep using enough 
spheres and cones to be smooth, and now make a few copies...
I do think other rendering methods would be useful. Some kind of 
adaptive subdivision into cones, tesselation, isosurface-type methods, 
etc...
I think a lot of the problem is just bad bounding though. A sphere sweep 
has a lot of empty space, a box doesn't work that well...some additional 
way of rejecting rays that can't intersect would probably help. Maybe a 
bounding sweep composed of cylinders or cones...

Followups to povray.programming.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <chr### [at] maccom>
POV-Ray TAG e-mail: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
TAG web site: http://tag.povray.org/

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