Okay, so I'm trying to render a single isosurface, but it is horribly slow.
I just have a pigment set on it.  I was told that converting it to a mesh
or height field would make it render faster and I was wondering if anyone
could help me do this.  Thanks.

Matt Leonard

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Wasn't it Yepido who wrote:
>Okay, so I'm trying to render a single isosurface, but it is horribly slow.
>I just have a pigment set on it.  I was told that converting it to a mesh
>or height field would make it render faster and I was wondering if anyone
>could help me do this.  Thanks.

You could take a look at Kevin Loney's isosurface approximation macro,
or the faster version modified by Jaap Frank. However, on my machine, I
find that for most isosurfaces the parse time for the macro is longer
than the render time for the corresponding isosurface. So there's
usually only a benefit if you're rendering several copies of the surface
but parsing the macro only once.

On the other hand, if you're rendering a *parametric* isosurface, the
macro to use is Ingo Janssen's param.inc. This does run very much faster
than the corresponding parametric isosurface in most cases.

See these pages in my isosurface tutorial for details and example
scenes:

<http://www.econym.demon.co.uk/isotut/approx.htm>
<http://www.econym.demon.co.uk/isotut/param.htm>

-- 
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure

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In article <web.3f2864aa53158db828168570@news.povray.org> , "Yepido" 
<mcl### [at] ksuedu> wrote:

> Okay, so I'm trying to render a single isosurface, but it is horribly slow.
> I just have a pigment set on it.  I was told that converting it to a mesh
> or height field would make it render faster and I was wondering if anyone
> could help me do this.  Thanks.

You might also want to post a minimum scene with your isosurafce here
(assuming it is reasonably short). Maybe you are just making inefficient use
of the isosurface or its function.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

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