The latest render of my Fountain.

It's almost complete, as far as it goes, I'm working on a setting for
it.  all I need to add is small gas flames behind the grille at the
base, this should light the water from below, but I'm still struggling
with the gas nozzle design.

Time to Trace: aproximately 15hrs 40min

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> The latest render of my Fountain.

I like the design very much. The size and thickness of all elements fit well
together and pleases the eye. I haven't seen a fountain like that before.
Are you modelling from a reference or is it free fantasy? The only sad thing
about this image is the time for tracing: almost 16 hours you say! When you
say "trace" are you referring to rendering-time or do you mean parsing
(setting up the water particles)? In any case I think it's too much. Maybe
it can be optimised. It could be worth the extra effort. It's much easier to
continue with the next step - to play with textures and lighting - when your
model renders quickly.

Regards,
Hugo

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I'm glad you like it.

Hugo Asm wrote:

> > The latest render of my Fountain.
>
> I like the design very much. The size and thickness of all elements fit well
> together and pleases the eye. I haven't seen a fountain like that before.
> Are you modelling from a reference or is it free fantasy?

I was trying for a hint of Arabic or Middle eastern influences, I like the
style of architecture.
The concept, however, is all mine:  So far as I know, there is no fountain that
looks like this one.

> The only sad thing
> about this image is the time for tracing: almost 16 hours you say! When you
> say "trace" are you referring to rendering-time or do you mean parsing
> (setting up the water particles)?

The actual parsing takes about nine minutes, that's the Spray macro at work.
It takes slightly longer for photons to parse, the glass is slow, but what
really slows it down are the water
and the isosurfaces.  I've tried to optimize them but they're just really
slow.  Especially the wraught copper grate
at the base.  So far I haven't been able to render more than one pass with
radiosity becouse my computer is too slow,
it chokes on the water.

> In any case I think it's too much. Maybe
> it can be optimised. It could be worth the extra effort. It's much easier to
> continue with the next step - to play with textures and lighting - when your
> model renders quickly.
>
> Regards,
> Hugo
>
Part of the problem is my machine, I'm using a Macintosh G4 400 Mhz Tower with
a truely pitiful ammount of RAM.
I'm looking at upgrading to a 2.6 Ghz G5 w/ at least 512 Mb of RAM sometime,
maybe this fall but, as a student, I have
little control over my budget.

A.D.B

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well the water particles are hard to see. i didn't even know they were there
until i read this post. i'm also on a comparatively slow computer, and I
wouldn't dream of using an isosurface for the water. i'd use a height_field
generated by a pigment function similar to one that you might use for an
isosurface version.

or are the columns the isosurfaces that slow it down? are the columns
isosurfaces?

i remember reading the Renderman Companion back before i discovered pov. i
never finished it, or played with BMRT very much, but I remember one idea
they mentioned. Always use a complex shader to simulate complex geometry
when possible. I bring this up because, although it's great to have real
bumpy edges in the curvey columns, they aren't noticeable enough to be worth
an extra 12 hours of render time. especially the large base columns that are
heavily shadowed and whose edges you don't see. though even on the tall
columns, you only notice the edges on the sides that have sky showing.

it might take some skill getting a spiral texture to look that good. how
costly would a sphere_sweep be if you used one and rotated copies of it a
few times to create a column?

anyway, i like the design. i would like to see the middle part stand out
more, the nozzle. also, if it's shooting water up, it would be wet. the
texture doesn't look wet really. fresnel reflection on that might help a
little.  good luck, i hope to see updates when you complete it.

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