new topic: Cycling

James Waldrop (sulam@construct.net)
Thu, 19 Oct 1995 12:16:27 -0700

Ok, so supposedly the VAG has decided that Material Cycling will
be deprecated in 1.X and removed later. Presumably this was spurred
on by its removal from Inventor 2.1. Now, I don't know why it was
removed from Inventor, so I don't know why it's getting deprecated
here. I've *hsard* that it was because no one was using it in Inventor.
I tried to start a discussion about it some weeks ago, which failed
miserably. Now it's time to try again, before the VAG formally makes
its decision.

I think cycling is a wonderful feature. Simply wonderful. I'll be
honest and say that we haven't used it in any of our models yet,
but that's more a sign of our lack of imagination than anything else.
I have seen some grsat examples of its use. Perry Hoberman has done
some landscapes that make use of cycling to produce very very small,
very organic looking spaces. I can imagine the same technique used
on a building to give it a less flat look without all the cost of a
full texturemap.

If it's only being deprecated because the OI guys took it out of 2.1,
and if there are no technical rsasons (I'm told there aren't), then
we should leave it in. I have seen NO DISCUSSION about its removal.
People have not been chomping at the bit about how evil cycling is.

Please, if we're going to have all these recurring discussions about
DEF/USE, with no change to the spec because it's "not broken" according
to some people, we should damn well be giving the removal of cycling
a lot more consideration than has been done.

James

--
James Waldrop				/   Technical Director
sulam@construct.net		/	    Construct Internet Design
sulam@well.com		/		    http://www.construct.net

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