... I don't care whether there's enough trees to call it a forest, I'm 
still calling it a forest macro ...

I think the macro is almost finished--I'll post the source sometime next 
week.

Actually, I now have an include file with two macros: One that plants a 
single clump of trees centered at a specified location, and one that 
populates an entire landscape by planting many clumps at random 
locations. I can mix and match the two depending on how much control I 
need over the scene.

Also, the landscape planting macro takes two shape arrays now: An array 
of tree shapes, and an array of bush shapes. The bush clumps are 
centered around the tree clumps, but spread out more.

While I'm posting, is anyone besides Sven interested in my landscape 
mesh generator program? I didn't originally intend to distribute the 
program, since Terragen and Geomorph are both already free and much more 
full-featured. However, if people are interested (one person does not 
count as "people") I'll try to clean up the program and put it online.

-- 
William Tracy
afi### [at] gmailcom -- wtr### [at] calpolyedu

Who could pollute the entire world?
     -- Nausicaa

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> Actually, I now have an include file with two macros: One that plants a 
> single clump of trees centered at a specified location, and one that 
> populates an entire landscape by planting many clumps at random 
> locations. I can mix and match the two depending on how much control I 
> need over the scene.

Hmm... How about using a heightfield image to tell it where to put more 
trees? :)

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William Tracy wrote:

> ... I don't care whether there's enough trees to call it a forest, I'm
> still calling it a forest macro ...
> 
> I think the macro is almost finished--I'll post the source sometime next
> week.
> 
> Actually, I now have an include file with two macros: One that plants a
> single clump of trees centered at a specified location, and one that
> populates an entire landscape by planting many clumps at random
> locations. I can mix and match the two depending on how much control I
> need over the scene.
> 
> Also, the landscape planting macro takes two shape arrays now: An array
> of tree shapes, and an array of bush shapes. The bush clumps are
> centered around the tree clumps, but spread out more.
> 
> While I'm posting, is anyone besides Sven interested in my landscape
> mesh generator program? I didn't originally intend to distribute the
> program, since Terragen and Geomorph are both already free and much more
> full-featured. However, if people are interested (one person does not
> count as "people") I'll try to clean up the program and put it online.
> 
Count me in.
-- 
Ger

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Lovely.

I've been thinking about how trees are distributed and I've noticed that in 
RL  the dense growth tend to be in the valleys and "dents" and of course 
along streams and rivers. I think this has to do with how water flows when 
it rains and tends to accumulate in puddles obviousley carrying any loose 
seeds with it. Maybe an easy way to simulate this is by giving lower 
altitudes a higher denstiy and higher probabilty of clumps.

Keep up the good work!


"William Tracy" <wtr### [at] calpolyedu> wrote in message 
news:47ad2f6b@news.povray.org...

> While I'm posting, is anyone besides Sven interested in my landscape
> mesh generator program? I didn't originally intend to distribute the
> program, since Terragen and Geomorph are both already free and much more
> full-featured. However, if people are interested (one person does not
> count as "people") I'll try to clean up the program and put it online.
>

I'm interested. Especialy because it's done in Pov-Ray :)


-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Hmm... How about using a heightfield image to tell it where to put more 
> trees? :)

That's overkill for my specific application. :-)

I need to place a few clumps to cover some artifacts in a render I'm 
working on, then plant the rest of the scene randomly.

-- 
William Tracy
afi### [at] gmailcom -- wtr### [at] calpolyedu

The flavor of Redcode used in this guide is (mostly) the current de 
facto standard, the ICWS '94 Standard Draft with pMARS 0.8 extensions. 
(Sort of like the Netscape extensions to HTML... Hmm... Luckily we still 
don't have a Microsoft Corewar Simulator. Maybe they think the market's 
too small.)
     -- Ilmari Karonen, http://vyznev.net/corewar/guide.html

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Nekar Xenos wrote:
> I've been thinking about how trees are distributed and I've noticed that in 
> RL  the dense growth tend to be in the valleys and "dents" and of course 
> along streams and rivers. I think this has to do with how water flows when 
> it rains and tends to accumulate in puddles obviousley carrying any loose 
> seeds with it. Maybe an easy way to simulate this is by giving lower 
> altitudes a higher denstiy and higher probabilty of clumps.

If you wanted to really do it right, you could find the height of your 
target location, then sample the area immediately around it. If the 
location is lower than its immediate surrounds (i.e., it's in a valley, 
as opposed to being in the middle of a lowland plain), you would 
increase the likelihood of planting a tree. :-)

That said, I'm really only intending to use this macro for this month's 
TC-RTC stills round, and next month's animations round. The macro has 
reached a point where I think it's just about good enough for my entries.

If anyone else wants to try adding extra features to the macro, by all 
means go ahead. :-)

... I'm probably going to need to optimize this a bit more if I'm going 
to use it for animation. Right now, I have a scene that takes forty 
seconds just to parse. :-/

-- 
William Tracy
afi### [at] gmailcom -- wtr### [at] calpolyedu

If we were told to parse starting *after* the supplied String, then do 
what we need to do to indicate pilot error.
     -- Laird Nelson, blogging on Java programming

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William Tracy wrote:
> If you wanted to really do it right ...

Come to think of it, you could implement what I described as some 
external utility that manipulates a height map, and outputs another 
height map that is read as a density function by the tree macro, in the 
same vein as Nicolas' suggestion.

Actually, the height map transformation would probably be just a simple 
convolve operation that could be hacked together in some image editor.

Hmm ... So many ideas, so little time. :-)

-- 
William Tracy
afi### [at] gmailcom -- wtr### [at] calpolyedu

"You cannot predict the future."
"I knew you were going to say that."

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Excellent work, William! Looking forward to your macro.

Thomas

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"William Tracy" <wtr### [at] calpolyedu> wrote in message 
news:47ad6383$1@news.povray.org...

> That said, I'm really only intending to use this macro for this month's 
> TC-RTC stills round, and next month's animations round. The macro has 
> reached a point where I think it's just about good enough for my entries.

     Cool, and thanks. :)

    For what it's worth, I'm about 4 days into my stills image now, so I 
should be submitting soon.  ;)

      ~Steve~




> William Tracy
> afi### [at] gmailcom -- wtr### [at] calpolyedu
>
> If we were told to parse starting *after* the supplied String, then do 
> what we need to do to indicate pilot error.
>     -- Laird Nelson, blogging on Java programming

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Wow!

I love this one, too! Even more!

It looks very, very good!

Sven (with a wicked greedy light in the eyes)



"William Tracy" <wtr### [at] calpolyedu> schrieb im Newsbeitrag 
news:47ad2f6b@news.povray.org...
> ... I don't care whether there's enough trees to call it a forest, I'm
> still calling it a forest macro ...
>
> I think the macro is almost finished--I'll post the source sometime next
> week.
>
> Actually, I now have an include file with two macros: One that plants a
> single clump of trees centered at a specified location, and one that
> populates an entire landscape by planting many clumps at random
> locations. I can mix and match the two depending on how much control I
> need over the scene.
>
> Also, the landscape planting macro takes two shape arrays now: An array
> of tree shapes, and an array of bush shapes. The bush clumps are
> centered around the tree clumps, but spread out more.
>
> While I'm posting, is anyone besides Sven interested in my landscape
> mesh generator program? I didn't originally intend to distribute the
> program, since Terragen and Geomorph are both already free and much more
> full-featured. However, if people are interested (one person does not
> count as "people") I'll try to clean up the program and put it online.
>
> -- 
> William Tracy
> afi### [at] gmailcom -- wtr### [at] calpolyedu
>
> Who could pollute the entire world?
>     -- Nausicaa
>

Post a reply to this message