Thanks very much all for the super quick response. I'm playing with Bicubic
patches, meshes and height fields to figure out which is best. I'll post an
update once I've come up with something.

kind regards,

Mark.


Will W wrote:
>wrote in message news:web.3e7a7baa935d6ddb99c6fd670[at]news.povray.org...
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm new to POVRay and am struggling with something. Is there a way to
>create
>> rolling hills if you have specific X/Y coordinates where you want the tops
>> of
>> the hills and the lowest points of the troughs to be? I'd also like to
>make
>> them specific heights and want the surface to smoothly transition from
>each
>> peak to each trough and on to the next hill or trough.
><snip>
>
>Bicubic patches would be a good bet. They will meet all your requirements,
>but you will have to roll your own code for determining the control points
>that will smoothly transition the surface across the peaks and valleys. The
>theory of bicubic patches is available through googling on "bezier patch"
>and/or "bicubic patch".
>
>I'd be interested in what you find out. I've got a similar problem
>(stretching skin over a shoulder girdle where the base of neck, point of
>shoulder and chest wall can rotate independently). But I'm weak in
>trigonometry  (I'm now working through a refresher course).
>
>As others have pointed out, meshes and height fields would also work. But it
>seems to me that before you could do much with either of those approaches,
>you would need to charaterize some of the intermediate points, which would
>force you into the same kind of math involved in bicubics. My suspicion is
>that the bicubic patch will be the most direct route from your data to an
>image.
>
>
>--
>Will Woodhull
>Thornhenge, SW Oregon, USA
>willl.at.thornhenge.net
>

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