> Yes, but what I mean, is actual concrete examples that have specific attrubutes
> that you want to have.   Then Step 1 is to simply try to copy that in SDL as
> closely as possible, to get the relevant code fleshed out.   After that, it
> would be about making the code more efficient, and thinking about the interface
> between MatLab's output and the limitation of POV-Ray to handle any given data
> structure.

This is exactly what I am doing now )

> I think that you mentioned that MatLab could do isosurfaces?   Doesn't CSG just
> work with the same min/max type operations that one would do in something like
> Shadertoy?

Yes, I mean this method:
https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/isosurface.html

> I'm also thinking that for certain things that you may want to do, a hybrid
> approach may be not only desirable, but necessary.  Converting _everything_ to a
> mesh might not be the best route.
> So, for example, why turn spheres, cones, cylinders, boxes, etc into meshes,
> when POV-Ray has those as mathematical primitives already?

Agree with you, for example soon I will modify my 'coneplot' to use 'native' POV
cones, instead of faces.

> Well, there is no "macro language" - it's just the same SDL inside a wrapper.

Thanks to your and Tor's samples I see that things are much more simple, than I
thought before. I modified 'surface' according suggestion (attached) and it
becomes more compact, readable, and writing much faster. Also manual data
control is possible in spreadsheet, if needed.

> So the idea that you have is to write the data to a file, and then call POV-Ray
> automatically and just have it render whatever got exported.

This is exactly how it works now.

> So, one question then is: can Matlab just export a list of the commands that the
> user wants to render?  Because then you could just write macros to handle all of
> the rendering tasks, Matlab could export the command names that the user wants
> to perform, and then with minimal massaging of the literal Matlab command lines,
>  that would serve as an include file for POV-Ray to run those macros.

Yes, this is the way I am following now - "macro is power" )

> I'm also thinking, that if something goes wrong between Matlab and POV-Ray,
> where do we look to debug it?   Who do we ask?  The user?  You?  Here?

Hope user will be not too lazy to write bug report to my github repository.

> If you wanted to tell me in Russian what I needed to do, would you want to
> describe _everything_ and have to translate it all?  Or would you just want to
> tell me the goal, and let me work it out on my own, in my own language?

I would call a macro and say: "just do it".

> - And I'm off to the races.

Happy racing )

-- YB

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Download 'surface3_make_mesh.pov.txt' (931 KB)