[vtkusers] How to best render surfaces composed of many coplanar facets?

[Rolf Mueller]

Dear VTK-Users,

I would like to render a surface of an object consisting of cubic
bricks (you may think of "Lego" bricks). All brick surfaces are
oriented along the 3 principle planes (xy, xz, yz), but they are
shifted back and forth to approximate a more complicated 3-dimensional
shape by  a sequence of steps.

I have found it very difficult to get a good rendering which shows
this structure clearly. It seems that the coplanar nature of the flat
brick-surface polygons obscures the difference in depth between the
bricks.

I have experimented with surface properties, adding texture, as well
as with randomly "dithering" the location of the vertices, but have
not come across a generally satisfying solution.

Any suggestions as to what else I may do to make the rendering of such
a surface in VTK are thus warmly welcome.

TIA
Rolf