If you have been following the groups here long enough, you might 
remember seeing some early versions of this image. Real life got in the 
way, and I didn't get to play with it for over a year. (I was able to 
relocate this thread here, if anyone's interested: 
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3Cweb.43e92d74109374333ef5a7570%40news.povray.org%3E/?ttop=242868&toff=850

)

It feels good to be working on it again. :-) It has suffered a little 
bit from code rot, which basically means that little gremlins sneak in 
and replace the simple, elegant code that you remember with ugly, 
complicated code that you don't. And they delete all the comments that 
you remember adding.

Most of the changes since I started working on it again a few weeks ago 
are fairly small; a texture here, a finish there, and so on. Probably 
the most obvious change is with the bugs. I've been trying to make it 
more obvious that they're insects and not birds or something (a friend 
of mine thought they were supposed to be satellites...), and I've got 
them following a spline now, which is definitely an improvement. I keep 
changing my mind on how big they should be and how many of them there 
should be, but I think I'm happy with where they are now.

Right now, I'm playing with the cupola, particularly the curtains (BTW, 
anybody happen to have any really good curtain photo references handy?). 
I'm probably going to wind up ripping it out and coding it again. :-)

I could use ideas for the "wood" texture. I'm not really sure what I 
actually want it to look like, really. Something that evokes the idea of 
wood, but still has an alien feel to it. I'm open to ideas.

And, now that I've mentioned it in Bill Pragnell's CGSphere image, yes, 
the sand is pretty bland. :-P I haven't touched it in a year. (If you 
look *really* *really* close, you might see my attempt at having sand 
grains be visible in the foreground.) It would probably help to have 
some ripples/wind effects (Google images pulled up this: 
http://photo.net/photo/pcd0738/great-sand-dune-hills-light-15.4.jpg )

Anyway, I'd love to hear thoughts from you guys. :-) It's been one heck 
of a trip so far.

-- 
William Tracy
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You know you've been raytracing too long when you've tried to scan your 
face for a texture.
Quietly Watching

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Attachments:
Download 'aliendesert.jpg' (119 KB)

Preview of image 'aliendesert.jpg'

Hey William, good to see this scene again :-)
The insects look good to me. I shouldn't change them more.
For the curtains, I would suggest Megapov and the ClothRay patch there. You 
would be able to simulate the movements of the cupula and the wind. It takes 
a bit of learning to use the patch correctly, but the reward is huge.
Not sure about the wood right now....

Thomas

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William Tracy <wtr### [at] calpolyedu> wrote:
> If you have been following the groups here long enough, you might
> remember seeing some early versions of this image. Real life got in the
I remember!

> It feels good to be working on it again. :-) It has suffered a little
> bit from code rot, which basically means that little gremlins sneak in
> and replace the simple, elegant code that you remember with ugly,
> complicated code that you don't. And they delete all the comments that
> you remember adding.
Always keep handy your gremlin-gun when approaching an old scene file. They
breed like rabbits. I've started fumigating my old scenes to cut down on
ammo expenditure.

> And, now that I've mentioned it in Bill Pragnell's CGSphere image, yes,
> the sand is pretty bland. :-P I haven't touched it in a year. (If you
> look *really* *really* close, you might see my attempt at having sand
> grains be visible in the foreground.) It would probably help to have
> some ripples/wind effects
Is the sand an isosurface? For ripples, I think I'd try adding a stretched
leopard pigment function into the mix, and maybe some very low level
turbulence (high octaves and omega) to get a slightly gritty feel. As I
mentioned in my cgsphere thread, this is proving reasonably successful for
my sand.

Good luck with the curtains - cloth is something I've not yet turned my hand
to, for very good reasons!

Bill

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Thomas de Groot wrote:
> For the curtains, I would suggest Megapov and the ClothRay patch there. You 
> would be able to simulate the movements of the cupula and the wind. It takes 
> a bit of learning to use the patch correctly, but the reward is huge.

That's actually what I'm using right now, but I'm just not using it very 
effectively yet. :-P Time to re-write some macros...

-- 
William Tracy
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You know you've been raytracing too long when you stop using a 
protractor to measure angles because you can do it just by looking.
Taps a.k.a. Tapio Vocadlo

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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> Is the sand an isosurface? For ripples, I think I'd try adding a stretched
> leopard pigment function into the mix, and maybe some very low level
> turbulence (high octaves and omega) to get a slightly gritty feel. As I
> mentioned in my cgsphere thread, this is proving reasonably successful for
> my sand.

The sand is a heightfield; the pattern for the heightfield is generated 
by this scene:

camera {
   location <0, -0, -10>
   look_at 0
}

plane {
   z, 10
   pigment {
     bumps
     turbulence 0.1
     color_map {
       [0 color rgb 0.]
       [1 color rgb 1]
     }
     scale <0.5, 1, 0.5>
   }
}

light_source {
   <0, 20, -100>
   color rgb 1
}

(Come to think of it, I should just make the plane be ambient 1 and 
ditch the light_source...I've learned it bit about SDL since I started 
this scene, to say the least.)

Now, why I'm putting off adding ripples is not that the pattern itself 
is hard to make; the challenge is using SDL to make the ripples appear 
on the windward side of the dunes, but not the leeward side. It's 
doable, but I'm still thinking about how to do it.

Probably the best approach would be a pattern map using the same pattern 
as the dunes, translated slightly. I'm not sure if that makes any sense. :-P

> Good luck with the curtains - cloth is something I've not yet turned my hand
> to, for very good reasons!

Yeah, I chickened out on making an entry for the "black robe" round of 
the 3d-rtc, myself. :-)

-- 
William Tracy
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You know you've been raytracing too long when you prefer bald romatic 
partners, because they're easier to model.
John VanSickle

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