Quote - > Quote - If this were 2D I'd say that's pretty much how vector objects are described...  So going to 3D, wouldn't this be comparable to a nurbs way of doing things?

Or am I missing something?

Well, NURBS, and any B-splines for that matter, generate a large set of points in space based on a mathematical relationship between a small set of control points. This program generates the points on a surface from a mathematical relationship over a range of coordinate values, so there are strong similarities.

However, in practice, they are really polar opposites. When you use a program with a NURBS implementation (say, Rhino, or Blender), you manipulate the surface visually, with the numeric ranges being secondary or unimportant. With this type of program (K3DSurf itself, or something like POV-Ray) you can work with the numbers and their mathematical relationships primarily, with the resulting visualization coming in second.

It's very appealing to numbers geeks like myself.

Captain Jack

That's an accurate resum (Thanks Captain Jack)

Also, one of the biggest difference between a mesh modeler (Blender,...) and a mathematical modeler is that the first one generate a mesh file composed of numerical data (points coordinates in 3D space) where the second generate only a set of mathematical functions, that you can use to generates 3D points by choosing your prefered resolution accuracy.

The mathematical modeling is, I think, the only way of using the power of computers to do the hard job of the designer: humain can only feal the "real world" and it's creatures (that's why our design is limited by our senses), the computer in other hand can understand and feal mathematical objects and can generate for us humain a 3D approximations of theses objects... The idea is then simple : if we can describe our creations by mathematical formulas (the only way of understanding of computers), then the computer can give us a 3D approximations of theses objects that we can never do because of it's power calculation that we don't have... There is also others advantages and implications unkown right now that will arise with the spread of this way of thinking.
It's sounds like a Fiction science but it's trully possible to use our computers to do some design for us
Taha