I believe my cliff scene is approaching its terminal state. Many things have
been happening since my last post on this subject, not the least one being
that I have reduced render time from 15 hours to about 3 hours (without the
plants) or 4 hours (with the plants).

["By Jove! I exclaimed, how did you achieve that, Holmes?"
 "Elementary, my dear Watson. It was just a case of mind over matter."
 (from: The Mistery of the Purloined Isosurface) ]

Well, the main secret was that I cut up the isosurface in two separate ones:
the cliff, and the landscape. And that made a whole lot of differences!
Obvious, you would say, but not for me :-)  I had to learn the hard way.
Another, slight speed imporvement, was to have the rotation of the cliff
inside the function, and not through the isosurface object.
Otherwise, I used Rune Johansen's furtex for the landscape, which gave it a
smoother aspect, and I re-modelled the floating seeds. The reddish bush-like
things were made and planted with the neat little macros of Bill Pragnell.
Thanks Bill!

So... what do you think??

Thomas

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Preview of image 'Cliff_14.jpg'

Thomas de Groot wrote:
> I believe my cliff scene is approaching its terminal state. Many things have
> been happening since my last post on this subject, not the least one being
> that I have reduced render time from 15 hours to about 3 hours (without the
> plants) or 4 hours (with the plants).
> 
> ["By Jove! I exclaimed, how did you achieve that, Holmes?"
>  "Elementary, my dear Watson. It was just a case of mind over matter."
>  (from: The Mistery of the Purloined Isosurface) ]
> 
> Well, the main secret was that I cut up the isosurface in two separate ones:
> the cliff, and the landscape. And that made a whole lot of differences!
> Obvious, you would say, but not for me :-)  I had to learn the hard way.
> Another, slight speed imporvement, was to have the rotation of the cliff
> inside the function, and not through the isosurface object.
> Otherwise, I used Rune Johansen's furtex for the landscape, which gave it a
> smoother aspect, and I re-modelled the floating seeds. The reddish bush-like
> things were made and planted with the neat little macros of Bill Pragnell.
> Thanks Bill!
> 
> So... what do you think??
> 
> Thomas
> 
> 
> 


just amazing ....

would love to see a waterfall rinsing over the cliffs edge ;-)

... dave

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> So... what do you think??

Hmm... frankly, I like it.

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Thomas de Groot wrote:

> 
> So... what do you think??

Good work. I think this is a great improvement to the image.  It is 
beginning to communicate the sense of fecundity observed through the 
lense of an alien world.  I would suggest pushing it farther creating 
more variety, greater sense of swelling, pregnancy, ripening, 
death/rebirth.  But that can be left for a second state.

As I posted before, this theme is very close to my heart.  An artist who 
I always thought explored this realm was Charles Burchfield

http://tinyurl.com/9a4z2

particularily with images like:

http://tinyurl.com/ajho5


A more famous artist of the same time and inclination was

Authur Dove

http://tinyurl.com/dps45

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"Thomas de Groot" <t.d### [at] internlnet> wrote:
>(...)
>
> So... what do you think??
>
> Thomas

Wow, it's really nice! The almost maroon cliffs contrast well with the
greens and yellows of the landscape. I wish it was a bit bigger- it's hard
to see the structure of the falling spore-things, and your baloon model is
almost lost. Maybe it could be brighter and/or closer? Or is there some way
you could move it to see its shadow on the landscape? Right now, its really
hard to tell how far away it is, and thus give a sense of scale to the
whole image.

Anyway, I discovered a similar thing the other day with some isosurfaces I
was playing with. Better to separate when one can!

Nice image.

Stefan

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When can we expect to see the final version on Zazzle? ;-)

[Well, I'd _consider_ buying anyway... not sure if I definitely would. LOL!]

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Fascinating. Beautiful.
Physics question:
What's the yellow star thing meant to be?
It's obviously not a prime source of illumination and two suns in the same 
system doesn't make a lot of sense.
DLM

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"dlm" <me### [at] addressinvalid> schreef in bericht
news:43d42b4a$1@news.povray.org...
> Fascinating. Beautiful.
> Physics question:
> What's the yellow star thing meant to be?
> It's obviously not a prime source of illumination and two suns in the same
> system doesn't make a lot of sense.
> DLM
>
>

Thank you!
Still, there are two suns in this system! Not impossible in nature: last
year, astronomers found a planet in a three star system!
Here the (small) yellow sun is far away, about the distance of Pluto or even
more. Its light is overshadowed by the prime source. Even so, in this scene,
it is a light source too, contributing slightly to the whole.

Thomas

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"David El Tom" <dav### [at] t-onlinede> schreef in bericht
news:43d38a0d$1@news.povray.org...
>
> just amazing ....
>
> would love to see a waterfall rinsing over the cliffs edge ;-)
>

Oh dear...! That would be a challenge... Shall think about it for a next
avatar of this scene (cannot promise anthing, though)

Thomas

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"Orchid XP v2" <voi### [at] devnull> schreef in bericht
news:43d3915d$1@news.povray.org...
> > So... what do you think??
>
> Hmm... frankly, I like it.

My sincere thanks; so do I ;-)

Thomas

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