Thanks to the feedback from my earlier post, I noticed that I was ONLY 
dithering the individual blades of the reeds and not the whole cattail. Just 
before I place each cattail I used a while loop until the product of rand 
and a scaling factor produced a number within a specified range, then used 
another while loop to produce a random tilt factor used to make it look like 
a slight on shore breeze was pushing the reeds. It's given the scene a less 
sterile appearance .... I keep falling into the trap of having everything 
lined up just so. Also .... I thought the "Vee" of Canadian Geese added a 
nice finish to the scene.

Jim

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"Jim Holsenback" <jho### [at] hotmailcom> schreef in bericht 
news:456970ee@news.povray.org...
> Thanks to the feedback from my earlier post, I noticed that I was ONLY 
> dithering the individual blades of the reeds and not the whole cattail. 
> Just before I place each cattail I used a while loop until the product of 
> rand and a scaling factor produced a number within a specified range, then 
> used another while loop to produce a random tilt factor used to make it 
> look like a slight on shore breeze was pushing the reeds. It's given the 
> scene a less sterile appearance .... I keep falling into the trap of 
> having everything lined up just so. Also .... I thought the "Vee" of 
> Canadian Geese added a nice finish to the scene.
>

Yes, this is much better Jim! Very nice scene now.
Surprisingly, in the images I just posted, there are also a "Vee" of 
birds!!! Nice coincidence :-)

Thomas

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Jim Holsenback wrote:

> sterile appearance .... I keep falling into the trap of having everything 
> lined up just so. 

Not necessarily a trap.  I personally find a "compulsion to tidiness", 
if you will accept the phrase, to be very expressive and a very 
encompassing metaphor.  It goes to the idea of understanding through 
ordering. And, when applied to landscape, it can allude in a backhanded 
manner to the chaotic in nature even as we seek to find order there. 
The taunt play you have between the geometry of the cattails and the 
small variation in their placement is nice.  The camera view emphasizing 
the geometry of the florals is great.  Personally I think you could push 
the scene further by adding some greater regularity to the clouds 
somehow.  Perhaps even the ripples too though I am not so sure there.

Also, when you allow some regularizing to enter your scene, you open up 
the marvelous potentials of relating the geometry of the scene objects 
and their placement to the compositional potential of the containing 
frame.




Also .... I thought the "Vee" of Canadian Geese added a
> nice finish to the scene.

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"Jim Charter" <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote in message 
news:456b2cfb$1@news.povray.org...
>  Personally I think you could push the scene further by adding some 
> greater regularity to the clouds somehow.  Perhaps even the ripples too 
> though I am not so sure there.
>
I agree .... this attempt at clouds was only after I became frustrated with 
trying to make clouds using concentric spheres (kind of a homebrew 
sky_sphere). I just couldn't get it to look like anything but textures on 
the inside of the spheres .... it just looked flat-ish (no depth). I feel 
using an isosurface and filling it with media is a step in the right 
direction for the effect I'm looking for .... your comments make me think 
it's worth another stab.

> Also .... I thought the "Vee" of Canadian Geese added a
>> nice finish to the scene.

thanks .... a wings model I used in an older scene .... not very detailed 
since they are meant to be pushed way out in the scene.

good feedback .... thanks

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"Jim Holsenback" <jho### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Thanks to the feedback from my earlier post, I noticed that I was ONLY
> dithering the individual blades of the reeds and not the whole cattail. Just
> before I place each cattail I used a while loop until the product of rand
> and a scaling factor produced a number within a specified range, then used
> another while loop to produce a random tilt factor used to make it look like
> a slight on shore breeze was pushing the reeds. It's given the scene a less
> sterile appearance .... I keep falling into the trap of having everything
> lined up just so.

Yes, the improvement is quite noticeable, although i think it would look
even better with *slightly* less randomness.  The clouds are also subtly,
but noticeably improved, and the ground fog looks much better.

The cattails are just begging for radiosity.  Have you considered that?

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"Cousin Ricky" <ric### [at] yahoocom> wrote in message 
news:web.456b5de27dfb92d885de7b680@news.povray.org...
> Yes, the improvement is quite noticeable, although i think it would look
> even better with *slightly* less randomness.  The clouds are also subtly,
> but noticeably improved, and the ground fog looks much better.

the cattails are scaled from 0.85 to 1 of the original size and the tilt in 
x axis is from 2.5 to 5 degrees. as I played around with it to determine 
ranges it seemed that any more was too much and any less was unnoticiable (1 
degree tilt is pretty hard to see with the naked eye).

I think I'm going to played with the cloud bank isosurface for future scenes 
.... found a dumb typo with the ground fog so thanks for noticing that.

>
> The cattails are just begging for radiosity.  Have you considered that?
>

using +am2 +a0.0 +r2 the render time was ~22hrs .... I've tried radiosity on 
a couple of scenes and had some minor successess, but YIKES the render time 
goes straight through the roof. if anyone has found how to get good results 
with modest impact on render time I might be more receptive to that.

thanks for the comments
Jim

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