Re: pm3d question

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

> 
> > The only real alternative would be to a full-featured, object-precision 3D 
> > rendering engine to replace both pm3d (polygons) and hidden3d (wireframe) 
> > output.  Such a beast would probably be even slower than hidden3d already is.
> 
> Do we really want (need) a full virtual reality engine in gnuplot?

What I want is the ability to mix surfaces, vectors, and labels in a single plot.
I have not found an exact example yet, but maybe these give an idea of
the desired output:

http://www-space.eps.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~yokoyama/pub/gcn3d/
http://www.astro.ku.dk/~rmidjord/ComputerPhysics/Project2/3Drendering.jpg
http://www.astro.phys.s.chiba-u.ac.jp/~matumoto/r-matsumoto.cdrom/d143bt68db.gif


For this purpose I really am not worried about artifacts due to
multiple overlapping surfaces or pathological topologies.  I just want
to hide the vectors and labels that are behind a colored surface while
showing the ones in front.



-- 
Ethan A Merritt       merritt@u.washington.edu
Biomolecular Structure Center
Mailstop 357742
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195