Here is a test render of a scene i have been working on the last days. 
It is a bit of a test case for how efficiently you can use massive 
instancing for reoccurring objects like trees instead of multiple 
versions with different levels of detail.  The result is quite 
encouraging, the scene contains:

  258000 grass patches each 6000 triangles
   24700 trees each 501000 triangles

   -> in total more than 13 billion triangles

The rest (terrain and house) is made with isosurfaces - total memory use 
about 700 Mb.  And it only takes about 6 hours to render (with 
ridiculously low radiosity settings, no area_light and quite bad aa though).

The clouds are made with makeclouds, the sky with lightsys/skylight and 
the trees with povtree.

Some observations i have made with the different tools:

- lightsys: the mesh created for the sky is not very good, i got 
multiple 'all determinants too small' messages.
- povtree seems to scale the leaves of the tree with the size of the 
branches, normally you'd expect all leaves to be about the same size. 
For the way how the leaves are used in a needle tree (which is of course 
not so suited for a closeup view) this is not so bad but otherwise it 
can look quite unrealistic.
- the makeclouds clouds do not look very good in a larger render but i 
would probably just have to create a higher resolution df3 for this purpose.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Sim-POV,
HCR-Edit and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/
Last updated 25 Oct. 2003 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

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Attachments:
Download 'forest01.jpg' (108 KB)

Preview of image 'forest01.jpg'

Among other things, Christoph Hormann wrote:

>   258000 grass patches each 6000 triangles
>    24700 trees each 501000 triangles
> 
>    -> in total more than 13 billion triangles

American billions ;)

-- 
light_source{9+9*x,1}camera{orthographic look_at(1-y)/4angle 30location
9/4-z*4}light_source{-9*z,1}union{box{.9-z.1+x clipped_by{plane{2+y-4*x
0}}}box{z-y-.1.1+z}box{-.1.1+x}box{.1z-.1}pigment{rgb<.8.2,1>}}//Jellby

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Christoph Hormann wrote:
> - povtree seems to scale the leaves of the tree with the size of the 
> branches, normally you'd expect all leaves to be about the same size. 
> For the way how the leaves are used in a needle tree (which is of course 
> not so suited for a closeup view) this is not so bad but otherwise it 
> can look quite unrealistic.

You can control that specifying negative values for 'Taper Off At'
on 'Bunch' tab. You can even achieve opposite effect when leaves
on top look bigger than bottom leaves :)

Gena.

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Looks good, Chris. Too bad I'm not willing to put up with such long 
render times.... I'd rather be animating :)

The rocky hills could use a little more variation in texturing to make 
them look abused and overgrown with lichen.... In fact, considering the 
way the trees are placed and the structure of the hills, I'd say they 
could be composed of volcanic ash (a.k.a. rhyolite).

We have places nearby which look a lot like your render. Such places are 
also overgrown with bonzai manzanita and mountain mint (smells like 
toothpaste).

Christoph Hormann wrote:

> 
> Here is a test render of a scene i have been working on the last days. <snip>


-- 
Samuel Benge

stb### [at] hotmailcom
See my website@: http://www.goldrush.com/~abenge/Top/index.html

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Samuel Benge wrote:
> Looks good, Chris. Too bad I'm not willing to put up with such long 
> render times.... I'd rather be animating :)

I consider 6 hours as rather fast, but this is of course a low quality 
render.

> The rocky hills could use a little more variation in texturing to make 
> them look abused and overgrown with lichen.... In fact, considering the 
> way the trees are placed and the structure of the hills, I'd say they 
> could be composed of volcanic ash (a.k.a. rhyolite).

The flatter parts of the mountains have more structure in the texture 
but most of it is covered by trees.  I also rendered it without trees 
once and it looked quite interesting (it is quite amazing how such a 
modification changes the look of the scene completely.

I am not sure about your suggestion for the type of stone, metamorphous 
rocks can lead to similar formations i think.  The lack of structure in 
the shadows is also due to the low radiosity quality.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Sim-POV,
HCR-Edit and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/
Last updated 25 Oct. 2003 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

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Gena wrote:
  >
> You can control that specifying negative values for 'Taper Off At'
> on 'Bunch' tab. You can even achieve opposite effect when leaves
> on top look bigger than bottom leaves :)

Ah, will try that.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Sim-POV,
HCR-Edit and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/
Last updated 25 Oct. 2003 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

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Very nice, I really like your terrain isosurfaces.  I wils I could get mine
to look that natual.

JFMILLER

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