Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> POV-Ray can render curved surfaces which are ACTUALLY CURVED.
>
> All those other modellers and renderers just *approximate* curves. In a
> normal renderer, a "sphere" is really a polygedron, with the lighting
> blurred a bit so that it looks smooth. (Unless you look at the profile.
> Or the shadow. Or where the shape intersects something else. Or...) When
> POV-Ray renders a sphere, it is perfectly spherical.
>
> Fundamentally, representing a sphere as a mesh is WRONG. Granted, that's
> not a very rational argument. But to me, meshes just seem so stupid and
> unsophisticated. Mathematical perfection is so much more exciting...

So that's where povray excels at, huh? Spheres and infinite planes. Too bad
RSOCPs are so rare in real life. Can you spot any spheres around you right now?
Thought so.

Right now one of GPUs main quests centers around automatic rendering of
tesselated surfaces. One day you'll have pretty much perfect polygon curves
close up without even asking for it.

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