Jarrod Hart wrote:

> Joe Conklin wrote:
>
> > what are they what do they do?
> >
> > --
> > http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/horizon/7128
> > visit and sign the book
> > remove "spam" to reply
> >
> > Joe
>
> I will give a simple explanation because it is the only one I know.
>
> 1. You use a height field to make mountains (other stuff too, suppose).
> 2. A heightfield is actually a normal 2D picture (looks like one of
> those arty tie-died Tshirts).
> 2b. Pov looks at each color in the tie-die, works out its number  (each
> color is numberred), and that is the height of the mountain at that
> point.
> 3. there are a couple of utilities you can use to generate them, and you
> can even use win paintbrush, but you would have to be skilled or stupid.
>
> 4.  To use, a) generate the heightfield somehow (I use terrain maker)
>                  b) do the 'insert>shapes>heightfield' thing in POV3.0
>                  c) under filename, put the one you want to use

  Jarrod,

   I am having a similar problem.  I am working on a project to use POV-Ray
in Radio Astronomy.  My problem is that I have a "contour map" in false
color that I want to use as my height field.  That way, I can get a good
estimate of the shape of the radio source.  Do you know of anyway to do
this?  I am basically wanting to turn a 2d map into a 3d contour map.

Any help would be appreciated from anyone,

Bob Ratliff
Morehead State University
Morehead Astrophysical Observatory

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