Very nice. This will be my background for a while.

Maybe I've been playing with video games too long, but my first thought was 
"he could make that tileable if he moved the river a bit."

I think shorter trees near the river might lend a bit more of an air of realism.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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This picture makes me want to travel to the Amazon for an adventure! It's very
beautiful!

Regards,
Dave Blandston

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>Jaime Vives Piqueres  on date 15/05/2010 09:48 wrote:
> Hi All:
>
> Google image search is becoming my first source for unexpected
> inspiration... as usual, I was searching for something else, when found a
> nice aerial pic of the Amazon river.
>
It's impressive, looks so... natural!
;-)
Paolo

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> spot-on!  Even the muddy waters:
>
> http://i.treehugger.com/images/2007/10/24/amazon-river.jpg

   Thanks, also for the reference pic, as it served to polish some details,
including some of the ones you mention later.

   For the color variation I used directly colors picked from the pic you
linked, but they don't look so natural... perhaps because the sunlight color
is somewhat yellowish.

   I think the density of the distribution is now better, but that was a nice
side effect of trying to implement a suggestion from Darren... ;)

-- 
Jaime Vives Piqueres

http://www.ignorancia.org

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Attachments:
Download 'amazonas-07.jpg' (572 KB)

Preview of image 'amazonas-07.jpg'

El 16/05/10 19:12, Darren New escribió:
> Very nice. This will be my background for a while.

   Thanks!

> I think shorter trees near the river might lend a bit more of an air of
> realism.

   Actually, this was a great suggestion, specially because it lead to many
other little but important changes.

   At first it looked too difficult to implement your suggestion, but in fact
it was very easy when I figured it out... again, the pigment function came
to the rescue: I used a heavily blurred version of the heightfield image
(which is basically a black river over a white background), and used that as
a multiplier to the trees scale. Simple, isn't? :)

   I used additional tricks based on the same function, like translating the
trees down as they approach the river, so the ones just at the edge only
show the foliage, or like increasing the density of the distribution also
near the river (see the pic on my response to nemesis).

   Thanks again!


-- 
Jaime Vives Piqueres

http://www.ignorancia.org

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> This picture makes me want to travel to the Amazon for an adventure! It's
> very beautiful!

   Thanks!

-- 
Jaime Vives Piqueres

http://www.ignorancia.org

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> It's impressive, looks so... natural!

   Thanks, but these greens still need much work to look really natural!

-- 
Jaime Vives Piqueres

http://www.ignorancia.org

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On Sat, 15 May 2010 09:48:41 +0200, Jaime Vives Piqueres  
<jai### [at] ignoranciaorg> wrote:

> Hi All:
>
>     Google image search is becoming my first source for unexpected
> inspiration... as usual, I was searching for something else, when found a
> nice aerial pic of the Amazon river.
>
>     Here are some details about this "quick hack":
>
>     + The base terrain is a heighfield, hand-painted over a googlemaps
> screen-shot.
>
>     + The river is just a plane, with a bump map also hand-painted in The
> Gimp, and a simple orange scattering media for the "muddy water" effect.
>
>     + There are 50,000 POVTrees, using only 4 different meshes. The tree
> sizes and distribution are half-guided by a pigment function.
>
>     + The huts were made with Wings3D in about a minute (well, maybe  
> two...)
> and the smoke column was borrowed from my office scene (the cigarette  
> smoke).
>
>     + Of course, skylight.inc was used for the lighting.
>
>     + render time was 40 min for the first pass, and just 20 for the  
> final one.
>
>     Regards,
>
>
Awesome!

How do you place trees with a pigment function? I would like to do the  
same with the grass in my alley scene, so the grass won't grow on the  
asphalt...

-Nekar Xenos-

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> Awesome!

   Thanks!

> How do you place trees with a pigment function? I would like to do the
> same with the grass in my alley scene, so the grass won't grow on the
> asphalt...

   Indeed you could use this technique for that... it's very easy, specially
if you are already using a heighfield for the ground. Make a copy of the
grayscale map, and paint black the zones where you don't want grass, and
white for the rest. Then declare a pigment function of it:

#declare f_grass_distribution=
   function{
    pigment{
     image_map{png "your_image.png"}
     rotate 90*x
     translate <-.5,0,-.5>
     scale as_your_heightfield
    }
   }

   Now, build the classic while loop where you shot the heighfield with
trace(), but for each placement found, test first if the grass distribution
allows a grass patch there:

   ...
   #if (f_grass_distribution(Inter.x,0,Inter.z).gray>0)
    object{grass_patch
      ...
      translate Inter
    }
   #end
   ...

   Hope this helps...


-- 
Jaime Vives Piqueres

http://www.ignorancia.org

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On Tue, 18 May 2010 14:59:20 +0200, Jaime Vives Piqueres  

<jai### [at] ignoranciaorg> wrote:


>> Awesome!
>
>    Thanks!
>
>> How do you place trees with a pigment function? I would like to do th
e
>> same with the grass in my alley scene, so the grass won't grow on the

>> asphalt...
>
>    Indeed you could use this technique for that... it's very easy,  

> specially
> if you are already using a heighfield for the ground. Make a copy of t
he
> grayscale map, and paint black the zones where you don't want grass, a
nd
> white for the rest. Then declare a pigment function of it:
>
> #declare f_grass_distribution=
>    function{
>     pigment{
>      image_map{png "your_image.png"}
>      rotate 90*x
>      translate <-.5,0,-.5>
>      scale as_your_heightfield
>     }
>    }
>
>    Now, build the classic while loop where you shot the heighfield wit
h
> trace(), but for each placement found, test first if the grass  

> distribution
> allows a grass patch there:
>
>    ...
>    #if (f_grass_distribution(Inter.x,0,Inter.z).gray>0)
>     object{grass_patch
>       ...
>       translate Inter
>     }
>    #end
>    ...
>
>    Hope this helps...
>
>
Thanks! I'll give it a try.

-Nekar Xenos-

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