Warp wrote:
>normdoering <nor### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
>> What's the difference between a wireframe and a mesh?
>
>  A mesh is a data structure containing vertex vectors, normal vectors and
>index triplets which tell which vertices form triangles.
>  From the point of view of the user, a mesh is a collection of free
>triangles.
>  A mesh is an object.
>
>  A wireframe is a way of representing a surface (*any* surface) by using
>line drawing.
>  A mesh can be drawn easily as a wireframe (by drawing a line for each
>edge of each triangle), but that doesn't make wireframes exclusive to
>meshes. All surfaces can be represented as a wireframe (it's only a
>question of how easy or difficult it is). Many other surfaces can also
>be rather easily drawn as wireframes.
>  A wireframe is basically an image, a visualization.

Thanks for the info.

But I meant something more abstract than mesh or wireframe... that's the
problem I have communicating this idea. When I say "The wireframe (or mesh)
is IN THERE" I don't mean there's a mesh2 file or wireframe there, I mean
the information, the 3D data, must be accessible in some form or else you
couldn't even ray trace it.

I suppose isosurfaces calculate the information on the fly as the image
needs it and doesn't save that information to a swap file or anything like
that (excuse my lack of programming terminology) but it does calculate some
form of 3D information in a way I don't understand and it can use the u,v /
x,y information from an image. The image itself tells you how many vertices
are needed, one for each pixel, the isosurface is calculating some form of
z value based on the greyscale so you must have the information you need to
create a mesh2.

Are there any mesh modelers out there that can do this?

normdoering

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