Peter Hertel wrote:
> If they are exactly the same (included only once, then transformed) the number
> of times you use the mesh would not matter much. But if you change the mesh by
> rand() calls for every tree or bush (which it seems like to me), I think parse
> time would benefit a lot.

I use rand() when rotating the trees, scaling them, and positioning 
them. I don't actually manipulate the mesh itself, and there's only one 
tree mesh in the scene.

Randomly rotating the trees about the Y axis is surprisingly effective 
at creating "different" trees. :-)

> At this resolution the mesh doesn't need to be very detailed anyway, so you
> might be able crank up the number of branches but lower the quality ("sub
> division") of the mesh without seeing any difference.

I've reached the point where individual branches are only one or two 
polygons. There's not really anywhere left to go, short of ditching 
Povtree for a program that doesn't insist on making every leaf be a 
separate object.

> Dependable on how you parse the trees, it might be difficult to do while still
> keeping the same location for the trees during the whole scene.  If you don't
> parse all the same rand() calls in the same order for every frame, the trees
> would change position/apperance. Hard to explain, but if you try to change this
> in my code example you see what I mean:

I know exactly what you mean, having been bitten by it in the past. :-) 
(In a still image actually, where I wanted to change one part of a 
macro-generated landscape without changing another part...no such luck.)

If I really want to cut down on the time spent placing trees, I'll write 
a macro that places the trees, writes the information to a file, and 
includes the file in every subsequent frame. :-)

-- 
William Tracy
afi### [at] gmailcom -- wtr### [at] calpolyedu

Guns don't kill people, catchphrases kill people.
     -- jwo7777777, posting on Slashdot

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