In article <39f5b947$1@news.povray.org>, "Bill DeWitt" 
<the### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:

>     I want to make a branching shape that I can then put leaves on. I
> suspect that it can be done, but I haven't been able to get anywhere 
> with it at all.

I whipped up this isosurface tree in about 20 minutes...but I cheated. 
:-)
I made a fractal blob, then used the blob pattern in a pigment in a 
pigment function, and called that function from the isosurface. Not too 
slow...and it still has many of the benefits of isosurfaces.

I don't think you are going to get a realistic looking, complex plant 
out of an ordinary function...it would certainly be possible, but the 
function would probably be horribly complex, inflexible, and slow 
rendering. Maybe if you designed some new pattern and used that in the 
isosurface...
You can get some odd branch-like structures that look fairly natural 
from a distance pretty easily, just by displacing a sphere with a 
pigment. Not exactly a tree though...

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

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