Hi all, I'm finally back on the newsgroups, after a *long* break due to a
difficult move.  Had no reliable 'net connection until now, except at the local
library (limited to 1/2 hour per session!) I *do* need a laptop...

I'm still catching up with POV-Ray's interesting new developments and associated
newsgroup posts--Halton randomness, 'emission' in place of ambient, the new mesh
camera, SSLT etc. Very cool stuff...still trying to understand it all. Kudos to
all the developers!

Meanwhile, I haven't been idle...

The movie AVATAR inspired me to try and make some animated wind-blown grass. It
turned out to be relatively easy, and worked first-time! (Well, in the
*simplistic* way that I went about it.) The mesh grass blades don't actually
bend *along* their lengths, they just rotate at their bases--mostly around z,
but a bit around y as well. Yet the result still looks rather cool.

This is a representative static image; I'll be posting the animation over at
p.b.a.

The idea is like a 'noise cloud' moving through the grass, causing each blade to
rotate *more* or *less*. I used eval_pigment (operating on several
averaged-together, moving bumps patterns) to produce the individual rotation
amounts at any particular spot--the 'wind.' The evaluation points for the
pattern(s) are the same as the random traced positions that place the grass
blades onto the main height_field. That simplified things: no need to do
multiple traces for grass AND eval_pigment; and it 'locked' the moving wind
patterns to the individual grass blades.

The anchor, seashells and etc. are mainly just 'filler'--to give the scene some
interest and scale. (Although they were fun to make.) The anchor is an sPatch
mesh model, with lots of POV spheres added/subtracted. The shells are simply
image_mapped spheres, to get a curved shape (the shell artwork was done in
Photoshop.) The back half of each sphere is then clipped off, to eliminate the
'other visible side.'

A last-minute addition was some 'sand' blowing across the dunes. For that, I
duplicated the dune HF, elevated it a bit in y, and added a mostly-transparent
moving texture--so the wispy sand 'hugs' the sand dunes.

Comments and questions welcome as always.

Ken W.

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Attachments:
Download 'grass_waving_800x600.bmp.dat' (1407 KB)

Sorry, that was supposed to have been a JPEG image; my apologies.  :-[

Here it is...

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Attachments:
Download 'grass_waving_800x600.jpg' (942 KB)

Preview of image 'grass_waving_800x600.jpg'

On 9/10/2010 12:20 AM, Kenneth wrote:
>
> Sorry, that was supposed to have been a JPEG image; my apologies.  :-[
>
> Here it is...

Oh, good. I don't have to wring your neck, now :) Thanks for that.. XD

Nice. Loving the rusty, crusty anchor. Beautifully textured! The grass 
texturing looks pretty good, though I'd go a slight bit yellower and a 
bit less saturated on the green. Grass is a picky thing for me I have 
yet to see grass in CG that I really, really liked.

The shells buried in the sand is a nice subtle touch.

-- 
~Mike

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Mike Raiford <"m[raiford]!at"@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/10/2010 12:20 AM, Kenneth wrote:
> >
> > Sorry, that was supposed to have been a JPEG image; my apologies.  :-[
> >
> > Here it is...
>
> Oh, good. I don't have to wring your neck, now :) Thanks for that.. XD

Whew, that was close!  ;-p  I got a bit 'rusty' in my absence--almost forgot my
log-in account number as well!
>
> Nice. Loving the rusty, crusty anchor. Beautifully textured!

Thanks. Although, it doesn't quite hold up under *close* inspection--the little
rusty bumps/spheres give themselves away.

> The grass texturing looks pretty good, though I'd go a slight bit yellower and
> a bit less saturated on the green.

Yeah, I think you're right. Didn't put enough thought into that. There's a beach
near me that has a very similar look; I need to take another close look at the
grass colors there. (One thing I did notice, *after* completing the scene, is
that beach grass seems to group itself into tight 'clumps', not just randomly
distributed blades. I did use a *somewhat* similar idea for my scene--there are
bare patches-- but it's not the same as in RL.)

> The shells buried in the sand is a nice subtle touch.

That was a bit of unplanned luck!  when I traced the shells onto the dune HF, I
didn't give any actual thought as to how/if they might be partially buried. But
when I saw the result, I said, "Yeah!"

Ken

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This image looks very nice to me. I only would make the stones whiter, 
because of the sea salt in the water and the air. But I like the beach-alike 
low vegetation.

When looking to that image, I would like to propose to you to develop a 
number of images showing the typical low, primitive vegetation of the Perm 
Earth age, maybe with some of its primitive animals who just started to live 
on land. Looking at your image, I think you could give lots of atmosphere to 
such a series of rendered Perm images (or of other early Earth ages).

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