Bob Hughes wrote:
> I didn't have a good computer until mid-'93 (DELL 486DX math coprocessor, 
> was Tandy 1000 before) so all I ever did was use e-paint, simple CAD 

	Hmm...Sounds familiar. I was with an 8088 XT until February 1994. At
which time I got a 486 DX2 66. I think one of the first uses I put it to
was Fractint. I actually had had version 7 which worked on an XT with
CGA graphics, and even then it was fun. But then with the newer Fractint
- heaven.

> even though I had upgraded the modem (2400 to 14400??). AOL was tried again 
> and it was much quicker to get places than I was able to do in CS. Until as 
> recently as last year I was still using AOL, even with Cable internet access 
> since 2000 (had only TV antenna, then small satellite dish those last two 
> years), although I had been in the process of leaving AOL quite a while.

	You're way ahead of me. I didn't get live Internet (other than email)
until 1998. I did, however, connect to a lot of local BBS's, which is
where I ultimately got POV-Ray.

> I gave the blob idea a try to check on it myself and if you have, too, then 
> you might be having trouble using cylinder components in the way I imagined. 

	I thought you were suggesting one cylinder component, and then many
spherical components for subtracting. Which is what I did. I placed a
(huge) number of spheres randomly just around the icing, and let them do
their work.

	The result is actually quite fine for now. However, it took quite a lot
of spherical blobs to get it (using about 25000). Perhaps I could bring
that number down by using a different radius, etc. I'm beginning to
think I'll go back to my cylindrical shell idea (not sure I need a
shell, now that I think about it), and see what I can concoct there, and
compare (using a normal pattern, or a normal map).

> I'm thinking using all spheres might still be plausible, but at this point 
> I'd be willing to change my suggestion to a height_field instead.  ;)

	Don't you mean a bump map? How would I use a height field?

	Well, here's my image using blobs:

http://www.nawaz.org/media/povray/newsgroup/cake.png

	I did the subtraction only on the sides of the icing, not on the top.
Didn't expect the top to be so well rounded (actually wanted it to be
flat), but it doesn't look too bad. If I keep this, I'll just compress
it vertically.

-- 
Beware of quantum ducks.       Quark!     Quark!


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

Post a reply to this message