Jaime Vives Piqueres <jai### [at] ignoranciaorg> wrote:

> > A recent thread on p.b.i. drew my attention to http://www.buining.com -
> > those 16-bit PNG elevation maps of Earth, the Moon and Mars look
> > tempting! But AFAIK PoV-Ray's height_field functionality can't handle
> > grayscale 16-bit PNGs... are there any tool for conversion into 16-bit
> > heightfield TGAs available?
>
> I think this should work:
>

OK, I'm *completely* new to making 16-bit HFs. And so far, I'm feeling like a
complete dunce.  :-S  Even after reading the POV documentation. Help!

I downloaded the EarthDEM2160.png image file from the given link--a hi-rez,
16-bit elevation map of the earth's continents. Or so says the site--I have no
way of checking the bit depth, computer-knowledge-impaired as I am. (Photoshop
5.0 brings it up as an 8-bit image.)

So, do I understand that the proper series of events is, first to use Jaime's
technique of rendering this image in POV--as a hi-rez render, and setting my INI
file to Output_File_Type=N?  Doing so, I get a nice .png rendering...in 16 bits,
I assume. (Do I need to set Bits_Per_Color = 16 in the INI file as well? Haven't
done that yet.)

Then, do I take that rendered image and stick it into a a HF scene?  Like thus--

global{.....}
camera{......}
light_source(.....}
height_field{png "rendered_HF_image.png" scale <1,.2,1> // smooth
     texture{......}
            }

I get a HF, but it looks rather rough (to my eyes), like the vertical resolution
is still 8-bit.  Don't really know for sure.

Do I have the steps correct?

Ken W.

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