POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : Drop-Down Insert Menu : Drop-Down Insert Menu Server Time
23 Apr 2024 17:45:02 EDT (-0400)
  Drop-Down Insert Menu  
From: Bald Eagle
Date: 5 Mar 2023 17:10:00
Message: <web.640512bb15f129b11f9dae3025979125@news.povray.org>
I've been juggling my usual 20 projects lately, and I noticed that there were
either omissions in the shape macros available, or the thumbnail graphic was
misleading, or I just missed something.

I thought there was a wireframe torus in shapes3.inc, but maybe not.

I also find myself (re)writing some of the same code for common tasks such as
drawing a sphere/cylinder sweep to graph equations or other "lines", creating a
union of triangles or a mesh from a 2D or 3D array, the whole PITS of making a
mesh2 {}, writing and reading data from files, using the evaluate keyword in
isosurfaces, text {}, vstr (), and other little things where the code I want
isn't at my fingertips, or the syntax or specifics of implementing a tricky
keyword aren't sufficiently clear.

Given that Josh English has inquired recently about the sample scenes, and we
have new and returning users to the forum, perhaps it's time to take a poll
about what small code snippets people would find most useful, and what sorts of
macro or function-based shapes would be desirable to have in the Insert Menu.

Also Kenneth apparently uses the resolution.ini file to do animations...

We have the heightfield-correcting macro, and the generating an image_map in
memory from a function, .... lots of stuff.

I've written a roundED_box macro which is just round_box but allows for
different corner radii, and I just adapted ring_sphere to make a ring_torus.

I went through a lot of Friedrich Lohmueller's analytical geometery macros WAY
back, but there are still some macros with descriptions in German that I can't
decipher what they are.

I find it's useful to have a "long" version that has explanatory comments for
new users or those unfamiliar with the object/keyword/macro, a usage example,
other bells and whistles, and a very short version that has minimal text for
common, everyday usage where I'm already fully familiar with what I'm doing.


So maybe if people have interesting code snippets, macros, or objects that they
have, I can assemble them into a .zip file to be added to the drop-down menu.

Others are invited to chime in on what additions they think would be useful.


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