Plane modification

Hi all,
I am attempting to construct a plane which has either grooves (like running a knife through puddy) or raised lines (like a piece of wire slued to paper).

My feeling is that this needs to be done with a plane divided into triangle strips. Unfortuantely, I am somewhat lost on how I would go about this. If someone could point me to an example resource I would appreciate it.

Cheers,
O

[Hlz]

Sounds like one for the math and algos board.

[jide]

It depends on the realism you want to have. Grooves can be simplified with bump-mapped textures, but they can also be full part of the geometry (so triangles making the groove). The last is more complicated, you'll generally have to do some modeling or find out some good maths equations.