Hi. I'm sorry if this is a FAQ, but I can't find anything
in the docs.

If I use a height field for a landscape, is there
any way I can randomly place objects on the surface,
or add grass that follows the heigt field?

-- 
I would've gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those pesky kids!

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"Bill Hails" <bil### [at] europeyahoo-inccom> wrote in message
news:3e5fdce5@news.povray.org...
> Hi. I'm sorry if this is a FAQ, but I can't find anything
> in the docs.
>
> If I use a height field for a landscape, is there
> any way I can randomly place objects on the surface,
> or add grass that follows the height field?

You could look up keyword 'trace' in the Scene Help if you have POV 3.5, and
check out the includes\rand.inc too.

If you have version 3.1 of POV-Ray and MegaPOV 0.7 there is a hf_height_at
feature made specifically for returning points on the surface of a height
field. There are four trace examples in the folder scenes\language so you
might be able to learn something from those. An alternative would be to
search the newsgroups; easy to do from the web http://news.povray.org/
(you'll need to click through to set up a cookie if your first time in).
There have been plenty of these HF object placement scenes done before.

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hughes, b. wrote:

> "Bill Hails" <bil### [at] europeyahoo-inccom> wrote in message
> news:3e5fdce5@news.povray.org...
>> Hi. I'm sorry if this is a FAQ, but I can't find anything
>> in the docs.
>>
>> If I use a height field for a landscape, is there
>> any way I can randomly place objects on the surface,
>> or add grass that follows the height field?
> 
> You could look up keyword 'trace' in the Scene Help if you have POV 3.5,
> and check out the includes\rand.inc too.

wow, thanks. 'trace' looks like the perfect solution, at least for
random placement. I'll play around.

> If you have version 3.1 of POV-Ray and MegaPOV 0.7 there is a hf_height_at
> feature made specifically for returning points on the surface of a height
> field. There are four trace examples in the folder scenes\language so you
> might be able to learn something from those. An alternative would be to
> search the newsgroups; easy to do from the web http://news.povray.org/
> (you'll need to click through to set up a cookie if your first time in).
> There have been plenty of these HF object placement scenes done before.

-- 
I would've gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those pesky kids!

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Bill Hails wrote:

>wow, thanks. 'trace' looks like the perfect solution, at least for
>random placement. I'll play around.


Yep, trace is exactly what you need.  I just discovered trace last night and
37 minutes later had randomly placed 80 trees on a height_field.

Quick & easy, gotta love it!

RG

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