Does anyone think there is any possibility of Moray supporting NURBS
any time in the future?  I made this spline curve in Rhino, offset it,
connected and joined the resulting curves, and revolved it, giving me
a beautiful goblet...but it is unfortunate that it had to be meshed for
Moray to use it.  Also, what about getting Moray to export real meshes
to povray instead of turning it all into a huge set of triangles which
takes forever to parse?  Ideally, Moray and Povray would both support
NURBS.

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Hi Erik, you recently wrote in moray.win:

> Also, what about getting Moray to export real meshes
> to povray instead of turning it all into a huge set of triangles which
> takes forever to parse?  
What's the difference between a mesh and 'a huge set of triangles'?

> Ideally, Moray and Povray would both support NURBS.
That's something you need to implement for POV-Ray and then submit a
patch. 

- Lutz
  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

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Lutz Kretzschmar wrote in message <35c### [at] 19417421410>...
>Hi Erik, you recently wrote in moray.win:
>
>> Also, what about getting Moray to export real meshes
>> to povray instead of turning it all into a huge set of triangles which
>> takes forever to parse?
>What's the difference between a mesh and 'a huge set of triangles'?


A mesh object is more memory efficient, especially when it's being re-used.
For example, it might take 2k of memory for the initial mesh, then all other
copies of the mesh are simply "pointers" to the original. Whereas the same
object as a set of triangles would require 2k for each object.

It's also a bit faster, considering the way unions work.

It's as simple as replacing
union

<triangle data>
}

with
mesh

<triangle data>
}

>- Lutz
>  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
>  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

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Hi Twyst, you recently wrote in moray.win:

> It's as simple as replacing union .... with mesh
That's not entirely true. One drawback of meshes is that they cannot
contain smooth triangles. Adding a smooth triangle to a mesh{} will
result in a normal triangle. Moray exports meshes for the sweeps under
those conditions where no smooth triangles are required.

I'm sure Rhino exports using smooth triangles, so using a mesh{} is
not an option.

- Lutz
  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

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Oops, when I said meshes I meant bezier patch

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Hi Erik, you recently wrote in moray.win:

> Oops, when I said meshes I meant bezier patch
Aha. In that case let me quote you again:
> Also, what about getting Moray to export real meshes to povray
> instead of turning it all into a huge set of triangles which
> takes forever to parse? 
Just what should Moray not turn into triangles and export directly to
POV-Ray as bezier patches? Moray does not export triangles unless
neccessary. If you are talking about the NURBS in Rhino: it is Rhino
that is writing triangles and not bezier patches, you should speak to
them. I have no idea how hard it is to turn a NURBS surface into a set
of bezier patches, I would guess it's pretty complex, though.
- Lutz
  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

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Lutz Kretzschmar wrote:
> 
> Hi Erik, you recently wrote in moray.win:
> 
> > Oops, when I said meshes I meant bezier patch
> Aha. In that case let me quote you again:
> > Also, what about getting Moray to export real meshes to povray
> > instead of turning it all into a huge set of triangles which
> > takes forever to parse?
> Just what should Moray not turn into triangles and export directly to
> POV-Ray as bezier patches? Moray does not export triangles unless
> neccessary. If you are talking about the NURBS in Rhino: it is Rhino
> that is writing triangles and not bezier patches, you should speak to
> them. I have no idea how hard it is to turn a NURBS surface into a set
> of bezier patches, I would guess it's pretty complex, though.
> - Lutz
>   email : lut### [at] stmuccom
>   Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

Strange, when I do a test with a -=simple=- patch it exports just fine,
where all the patches I exported before got turned into big sets of
triangles.  This of course makes me look like an idiot and undoubtedly
I will never again be taken seriously by this group.  But back to the
original intention of this thread...does anyone think Moray and Povray
will support NURBS in the future?  If not, why not?  If so, what
benefits do you think this will bring other than increased ease of
modelling?

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Hi Erik, you recently wrote in moray.win:

> Strange, when I do a test with a -=simple=- patch it exports just fine,
> where all the patches I exported before got turned into big sets of
> triangles. 
Maybe you were using Rhino and got confused <G>.

> ...does anyone think Moray and Povray
> will support NURBS in the future?  If not, why not?  
NURBS modelling is an extremely math-intensive thing, especially when
you start getting into trimming. I think the rendering (or
tesselation) part is not that bad, but someone would need to implement
it for POV-Ray. I'm sure at some point a NURBS surface will find it's
way into POV-Ray.

- Lutz
  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

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