Well I added something better than a flat plane, and moved the camera under 
the clouds.

For some reason it rendered *really* slow (and we're talking pixels per 
minute here) if I tried to use the media clouds and the 10000 trees at the 
same time.  So I rendered it twice, once without the clouds, and once 
without the trees.  Then joined them together in paint shop.  Took about an 
hour to render in total at 1600x1200 resolution.  I think it would have 
taken a year to do it all in one go!

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Preview of image 'trees.jpg'

scott wrote:
> Well I added something better than a flat plane, and moved the camera under 
> the clouds.
> 
> For some reason it rendered *really* slow (and we're talking pixels per 
> minute here) if I tried to use the media clouds and the 10000 trees at the 
> same time.  So I rendered it twice, once without the clouds, and once 
> without the trees.  Then joined them together in paint shop.  Took about an 
> hour to render in total at 1600x1200 resolution.  I think it would have 
> taken a year to do it all in one go!

I can wholly relate to slow render times. :) I'll use it on my kids, 
when I have a few, and tell them it builds character.

I like the sunset a lot. It was a little confusing before, with the 
clouds below the camera and all. One question from someone who has had 
mostly just static placement experience: how did you place the trees on 
the terrain - I understand random placement - but how did you get them 
to stay on top of the heightfield?

Great work. Some focal blur would be really cool too (but that would 
kill your render time badly).

~Mike

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too much ambient.  make finish{ambient rgb 0}

"scott" <spa### [at] spamcom> wrote in message news:41b784f3@news.povray.org...
> Well I added something better than a flat plane, and moved the camera 
> under the clouds.
>
> For some reason it rendered *really* slow (and we're talking pixels per 
> minute here) if I tried to use the media clouds and the 10000 trees at the 
> same time.  So I rendered it twice, once without the clouds, and once 
> without the trees.  Then joined them together in paint shop.  Took about 
> an hour to render in total at 1600x1200 resolution.  I think it would have 
> taken a year to do it all in one go!
>
>
>

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> Well I added something better than a flat plane, and moved the camera
under
> the clouds.


It's a major improvement. The colors remind me of a sunset much more now. I
would suggest increasing the size of the clouds unless you're really going
for that wispy look.

> For some reason it rendered *really* slow (and we're talking pixels per
> minute here) if I tried to use the media clouds and the 10000 trees at the
> same time.

That's strange. Does it still do that if you add no_shadow to the trees? I
would understand the trees slowing things down because of shadow rays, but
not by *that* much. At least not in the upper half of the image.

 - Slime
 [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

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Mike Thorn wrote:
> scott wrote:
>> Well I added something better than a flat plane, and moved the
>> camera under the clouds.
>>
>> For some reason it rendered *really* slow (and we're talking pixels
>> per minute here) if I tried to use the media clouds and the 10000
>> trees at the same time.  So I rendered it twice, once without the
>> clouds, and once without the trees.  Then joined them together in
>> paint shop.  Took about an hour to render in total at 1600x1200
>> resolution.  I think it would have taken a year to do it all in one
>> go!
>
> I can wholly relate to slow render times. :) I'll use it on my kids,
> when I have a few, and tell them it builds character.
>
> I like the sunset a lot. It was a little confusing before, with the
> clouds below the camera and all.

Well I was on a plane when I first saw it and thought "wow" :-)

> One question from someone who has had
> mostly just static placement experience: how did you place the trees
> on the terrain - I understand random placement - but how did you get
> them to stay on top of the heightfield?

Well firstly, they're not entirely random, I made them more likely to go in
the lower bits of the terrain, and impossible for them to go on some of the
highest bits.  It looked a bit silly with them perched on the high bits of
the land.

And to get them at the right height, just use "trace".  It was the first
time I had used this, but remember seeing it elsewhere so looked it up in
the help docs.  Pretty easy to use.

> Great work. Some focal blur would be really cool too (but that would
> kill your render time badly).

Maybe I'll leave it running on my work PC over xmas!

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Slime wrote:
>> Well I added something better than a flat plane, and moved the
>> camera under the clouds.
>
>
> It's a major improvement. The colors remind me of a sunset much more
> now. I would suggest increasing the size of the clouds unless you're
> really going for that wispy look.
>
>> For some reason it rendered *really* slow (and we're talking pixels
>> per minute here) if I tried to use the media clouds and the 10000
>> trees at the same time.
>
> That's strange. Does it still do that if you add no_shadow to the
> trees? I would understand the trees slowing things down because of
> shadow rays, but not by *that* much. At least not in the upper half
> of the image.

That's what confused me too, I left it for a few minutes and it hadn't even
finished the top line.  I'll try the no_shadow on the trees this evening if
I get time.

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Greg M. Johnson wrote:
> too much ambient.  make finish{ambient rgb 0}

I thought I'd set ambient=0, but I'll check.  There is a blue shadowless
light pointing down so maybe I'll reduce that a bit to see the result.

Which bit did you think looked too bright? The dark bits of ground or the
backs of the trees?

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>> That's strange. Does it still do that if you add no_shadow to the
>> trees? I would understand the trees slowing things down because of
>> shadow rays, but not by *that* much. At least not in the upper half
>> of the image.
>
> That's what confused me too, I left it for a few minutes and it
> hadn't even finished the top line.  I'll try the no_shadow on the
> trees this evening if I get time.

OK, well the no_shadow made it renderable in one go.  No idea why the tree 
shadow would be affecting the sky rendering but hey it works.  Made the 
clouds a bit bigger, messed a bit with the lighting and put some more media 
in the air to make the ground fade to orange in the distance.

I'm thinking it just needs a house or something on that lump on the right in 
the foreground.

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Preview of image 'sky2.jpg'

scott wrote:
> OK, well the no_shadow made it renderable in one go.  No idea why the tree 
> shadow would be affecting the sky rendering but hey it works.  Made the 
> clouds a bit bigger, messed a bit with the lighting and put some more media 
> in the air to make the ground fade to orange in the distance.

I like the media in the air. How long did this image take to render 
overall (just curious how much that media slows it down)?

> I'm thinking it just needs a house or something on that lump on the right in 
> the foreground. 

A wolf would look really cool. :)

(but then, I just have something about wolves...)

~Mike

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"Mike Thorn" <mik### [at] realitycheckmultimediacom> wrote in message
news:41bb2507@news.povray.org
> scott wrote:
>> OK, well the no_shadow made it renderable in one go.  No idea why
>> the tree shadow would be affecting the sky rendering but hey it
>> works.  Made the clouds a bit bigger, messed a bit with the
>> lighting and put some more media in the air to make the ground
>> fade to orange in the distance.
>
> I like the media in the air. How long did this image take to render
> overall (just curious how much that media slows it down)?

Not all that long as I expected actually - I think it took about an hour to 
render 1280x1024 AA0.1 (for my desktop wallpaper!).

>> I'm thinking it just needs a house or something on that lump on
>> the right in the foreground.
>
> A wolf would look really cool. :)
>
> (but then, I just have something about wolves...)

Yes, a wolf howling would look great.  I'll have to look for a model.  I 
would also move the camera down in closer so that wolf was actually a decent 
size!

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