\chapter*{Preface}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Preface}

This manual is the working companion to the TUGboat article that introduced
lua-tikz3dtools~\cite{nice2025luatikz3dtools}. That article explains the
motivation for the package and the two core algorithms: a transitive partial
order occlusion comparator for affine simplices and a minimal partitioning
procedure that resolves tiles capable of partitioning one another.  The
present document has a more practical aim: it is meant to help a user write
scenes, render them, and reason about the resulting figures.

The package is built for a style of work in which the geometry remains
visible to the author. One specifies vectors, matrices, parametric maps,
filters, and lights. The scene is then partitioned, filtered, sorted, and
drawn. This is not a black-box workflow, and it is not meant to be. The hope
is that the user can understand not only what the package renders, but why it
renders it in that way.

The chapters are arranged in the order in which a new user is most likely to
need them. The introduction explains what sort of problem the package solves.
The next chapters show how to prepare a document, how to build a scene, and
how the individual commands behave. The later material collects practical
advice on sampling, filtering, and figure design. An appendix reviews the
linear-algebra conventions---homogeneous coordinates, row-vector
multiplication, and composition order---that underlie the entire interface.