web.47b08e79b78b94b040d56c170@news.povray.org...

> Norbert Kern's trees imaged in povray:
> http://hof.povray.org/Boreal_big.html
>
> In the FLOSS podcast, the guys were intrigued about how in the image, 
> "Boreal,"
> povray algorithms were used to position all the leaves on the trees. In an
> recording addressed to programmers, these programmers were intrigued that
> povray could create mathematical constructs that could then be imaged in a
> raytracer.

The FLOSS podcast was wrong. Norbert used mesh (Xfrog) trees and plants for 
this scene, which is the only way to create large plant populations such as 
these (thanks to mesh instantiation). POV-Ray's algorithms had nothing to do 
with the leaves, or indeed with the plants themselves.

In fact, the points that could be made are a little more complex and 
interesting.

First, Xfrog's method for designing plants is procedural, but it use nodes 
for user input, particularly for the splines and math functions that control 
the shapes and certain behaviours. Of course, the procedural generation 
itself requires something like a gazillion parameters anyway, so that pure 
text-based input would be much impractical.

A second point of interest is that what Norbert invented with the POV-Ray 
SDL for his nature scenes was the planting method. In fact, when I met the 
Xfrog people some years ago, they were really interested in the way we 
(POV-Ray folks) were using the SDL to populate areas with plants, as that's 
an important part of landscape design. Needless to say, any practical 
implementation of that would also require a gazillion parameters, real-time 
previsualisation, and a GUI.

It really should be repeated, again and again, that the script vs GUI 
modelling debate is moot in 2008, and has been so for a while. All high-end 
3D systems (and even specialised software like Poser and Xfrog) include 
scripts or nodes as part of their modelling / texturing / rendering toolset. 
Some stuff is better done with point-and-click mesh/NURBS editing, some 
stuff is easier to do through script or node programming.

G.


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