Christoph Hormann wrote:
> It's nice to see my idea inspiring something like this.  The image looks 
> very good although you can't see much of the objects placed on the 
> surface at that size.

   Well, they are prety pathetic right now, although the placement idea 
with eval_pigment() and crackle pigments looks promissing (I've attached 
a more close view).

> Without radiosity 9 hours seems quite long but i assume the clouds take 
> most of the time.  You might consider using df3 files instead of object 
> pattern and meshes for the objects placed on the surface.

   I noticed later that it was my mistake: I used too high antialias 
settings... with something decent it tooks now 3 hours. The df3 clouds 
are fast, but have other inconvenients. And I prefer to wait a bit more 
but to do it all internally. It's a sort of purism by laziness... :) But 
I will take your advice about meshes for the houses, thanks.

> How many parameter sets have you tried?  

   The sun light and the sky dome depend on random altitude and azymuth, 
and other things depend on the sun and sky colors, like the fog, the 
clouds color or the water color and fading.

   The cloud shape and placement also have their own seeds, as the water 
level, the trees and houses. The camera is placed randomly too, with 
trace() to put it above the terrain at the desired height, and looking 
always to the center of the terrain for practical purpouses.

   The isosurface function pigment is scaled and translated randmoly, 
and the color map for it has also random entries. This gives quite 
diferent terrains, from soft hills to mountains with abrupt walls, 
although half of the time the results are not very usable.

   There is only one fixed slope texture at the moment, but I plan to 
add several choices for different types of terrains (desertic, artic, 
etc..), as I think this is the most important aspect to get clearly 
differentiated landscapes (right now all my tests look "mediterranean").

--
Jaime

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