"Greg M. Johnson" <gregj;-)565### [at] aolcom> wrote in message
news:40148bb3@news.povray.org...
> I'm about to try my hand at some outdoor scenes, where I'd like rolling
> hills.
>
> Any tips on the best way to get a fast-rendering scene (for use in
> animations)
> height fields,  isosurfaces, bicubic patches,  one of the above then
> converted to meshes ?


iso's just seem the right thing for me, except it does have the pitfalls of
getting it to look right. By that I mean the surface deformations together
with a texture.

HF's are nice sometimes but you would have a more difficult time getting
both a fast and good surface due to the parse times demanded of higher
resolutions. I'd think meshes would also suffer the same fate, since by
animating you don't preserve the mesh in memory like a copy of it in a
still.

Here's a quick example of rolling hills made with a iso having a simple bump
pattern. Rendering 16 frames of it at 160x120 pixels and with default AA
takes a mere 24 seconds on my P4 2 GHz notebook. Even though it would get
slower as more detail were added it could be easiest to work with and
animate. My opinion anyway.

[oh good, I see now that Dan P replied with a HF example which
renders more than twice as fast as my iso here. Although, I get an artifact
on its horizon for some reason.]

#declare RollingHills=
function {
 pigment {bumps}
}

isosurface {
 function {
  y-RollingHills(x,y,z).gray*0.5
 }
 contained_by {
  box {-<10,1,10>,+<10,1,10>}
 }
 threshold 0
 accuracy 0.01
 max_gradient 1
 pigment {rgb <0.4,0.9,0.5>}
}

-- 
Bob H.
http://www.3digitaleyes.com

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