Is there an easy way to make real dents in a metal texture.  I don't want to
use normals because I want the dents to actually appear to remove/compress
the metal.  In other words along an edge the metal would be missing where
the dent was.

I am making a complex metal structure and would like to create occasional
dents in the metal.  I have a crude way of doing this by creating an object
of 5000 small spheres in the same space as the metal object then doing a
difference.  Needless to say this is very slow to render.  Is there an
easier way to do this?  I would use a clear texture mixed with the metal if
I could figure out a way to make polka-dots/spheres as a texture.

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> Is there an easy way to make real dents in a metal texture.

Heightfields or Isosurfaces. Both have limitations. HF's are fast but shape
is limited to a grid. Iso's are slow but shape is more flexible. Sometimes
Iso's are very hard to understand without being a math genious, but try this
link:

http://www-public.tu-bs.de:8080/~y0013390/pov/ic/index.html

Regards,
Hugo

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Well I want to make a very solid structure (like metal lattice work) but
have small dents appear here and there in the metal.  Creating a height
field or iso surface seems a more difficult route. I just want a way to make
small dents every so often in the surface.  If there was a way to make a
pigment that was made of polka dots I could replace the polka dot color with
a transparent color and get the effect I need.

"Hugo" <hua### [at] post3teledk> wrote in message
news:3c94e3b1$1@news.povray.org...
> > Is there an easy way to make real dents in a metal texture.
>
> Heightfields or Isosurfaces. Both have limitations. HF's are fast but
shape
> is limited to a grid. Iso's are slow but shape is more flexible. Sometimes
> Iso's are very hard to understand without being a math genious, but try
this
> link:
>
> http://www-public.tu-bs.de:8080/~y0013390/pov/ic/index.html
>
> Regards,
> Hugo
>
>

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In article <3c9513dd@news.povray.org>,
 "Patrick Dugan" <pat### [at] netinsnet> wrote:

> Well I want to make a very solid structure (like metal lattice work) but
> have small dents appear here and there in the metal.  Creating a height
> field or iso surface seems a more difficult route. I just want a way to make
> small dents every so often in the surface.  If there was a way to make a
> pigment that was made of polka dots I could replace the polka dot color with
> a transparent color and get the effect I need.

Making the pigment transparent in areas won't look anything like a dent, 
it will just show the inside of the object or show through it. There is 
no way to get a real surface imperfection with a texture effect. You 
might be able to use a mesh.

-- 
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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Patrick Dugan wrote:

>  If there was a way to make a pigment that was made of polka dots I could
> replace the polka dot color with a transparent color and get the effect I
> need.
>

The leopard pattern can make a nice polka dot.
--

Have Fun!

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Wasn't it Patrick Dugan who wrote:
>Is there an easy way to make real dents in a metal texture.  I don't want to
>use normals because I want the dents to actually appear to remove/compress
>the metal.  In other words along an edge the metal would be missing where
>the dent was.
>
>I am making a complex metal structure and would like to create occasional
>dents in the metal.  I have a crude way of doing this by creating an object
>of 5000 small spheres in the same space as the metal object then doing a
>difference.

Have you tried using the trace() facility [v3.5 or MegaPov] to find out
which of your 5000 small spheres actually touch the surface of your
object? Once you know that, you don't need to include the spheres that
miss your object or which lie entirely inside it. This would
substantially reduce the number of objects that need to be considered in
the difference, and make it run much faster.

If you trace() from the camera position, you could also choose to only
include those dents that are actually visible from the camera position.

Remember also that it's often much faster to difference the spheres from
the individual pieces of your complex object before you union them
together. If you union first, then the bounding box is larger and fewer.

-- 
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure

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