Alain <aze### [at] qwertyorg> wrote:

> > This is something that has been bothering me for some time. My scene files are
> > all very 'clinical', that is they are too perfect. For example, I have rendered
> > a scene with a paved street, a brick wall and a lamp post, but everything looks
> > perfectly 'clean'; the wall is perfectly straight, there is no dirt, no rubbish,
> > no anything other than what I have already mentioned. What do I have to do to
> > get natural looking scenes?
> >
> > Also, in over a year of using POV-Ray, I have not progressed much beyond the
> > basic solid primitives, and blob has gone almost unused. Is there any kind of
> > maths I need to study, or do I need to use a modeler, or what?
> >
> > If anyone could give me a hand with these questions, I would be much obliged.
> >
> > D103
> >
> >
> >
>
> You can use some creative texturing to dirtyup your objects. Some
> gradient going from dirty to clean that you layer over the base onject's
> texture. You can also use some image_map.
>
> For the rubish, you need to model and place it.
>
> Replace your wall made from a single box by one made from a LOT of
> smaller boxes. Use one or some bricks made as meshes, mirror and rotate
> them around to make them look like there are many more models. There are
> some free modelers around that can help, or you can use some ready made
> ones. Look in the objects collection.
>
> If you have a vast glass wall and it have some seams using texturing,
> adding some normal perturbation with the cells pattern scalled to match
> the details can be good. Just use a small bump_size. Nesting pattern can
> be fun.
>
> Use light placement creatively, play with the shadows.
> Use area_light. I recomend using the adaptive option and a relatively
> dence array. Start with adaptive 0 and increase the value if needed.
>
> Place your camera artisticaly, apply a small amount of tilting, like
> less that 1 or 2 degrees.
> Use a whide field of view, of a narrow one and the camera pulled back,
> and experiment with the various projection modes: spherical, omnimax,
> ultrawhideangle, fisheye,...
> For play, apply some small normal to the camera.
> Use focal blur, but not while desining the scene.
>
> Use fog (now), or media (later).
>
> Don't forget to also model the background, those far away scene
> elements. Also, don't forget to put something outside your field of
> view. It can cast some shadows, and can be essential if you have
> anything reflective.
> It also enable you to move and orient the camera with more latitude/freedom.
>
> Don't be afraid to experiment. Explore the primitives that you barely or
> did not already use. A bicubic_patch object can do a good job as some
> stray papers... Come back here if you have more questions.
>
> Regarding maths, some trigonometry, mostly basic, can help.
>
>
>
> Alain

Thanks Alain,
I'm still experimenting with dirty textures, and I think I've got the rubbish
sorted out, but I'm still having problems with the brick wall. I started of
using the irregular bricks macro, but I couldn't simulate a difference in depth
between the bricks and the mortar using normals. I found a file in the objects
collection called meshrelief, and I tried using a box for the mortar and a
#while loop to place the bricks along it, but the results still looked very
flat.

As for the paved street, I replaced the brick texture with a crackle texture and
normal to go along with it, the results were satisfactory.

The lighting is solely provided by lampposts, as the scene is in the dark.

I have yet to fiddle with the camera settings, apart from focal blur, which I
have decided not to use, as all of the scene is fairly close up.

Media might be of some use, but I haven't got around to that either.

Thanks for the idea with bicubic patches, I feel that could become very useful.

When I mentioned maths, I was thinking more of functions, but in any case I
happen to have just finished trigonometry in my maths.

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>
> Texturing (especially proper selection of pigments and normals) helps.
>
> http://warp.povusers.org/povtips/
> http://wiki.povray.org/content/Documentation:Tutorial_Section_3.3#Slope_Map_Tutorial
>
> --
>                                                           - Warp

Thanks for the links, I found them quite helpful. One thing though, the floor
boards look as though they have been coated in plastic. I have come across this
before, is there a way to get polished looking wood without it looking plastic?


Sherry Shaw <ten### [at] aolcom> wrote:
> Random numbers are your friend.
>
> You can use random values to modify scale, translation, rotation,
> color_maps, isosurface values--anything with numbers in it can be "nudged."
>

I haven't got much experience with random numbers, but I'll do some
experimentation.

> You can use a macro with some randomness built into it to create
> multiple small objects like bricks or boards.  Call the macro from
> inside a loop to build walls and so forth.
>

As previously mentioned, I did use a macro in textures.inc to make my original
brick wall, I am at present trying others from the objects collection and other
sources.

> For simple, basically rectangular shapes like bricks or building stones,
> try using code to build a simple mesh and then randomly nudge its
> individual points in a macro.  This works really well with a nice, bumpy
> texture, the kind that hides a multitude of sins.  ;)

I did this using a file from the objects collection, the bricks looked ok, but
when I added mortar as mentioned above, the wall looked like one surface with a
colour map and a single normal.

>
> --Sherry Shaw
>
> --
> #macro T(E,N)sphere{x,.4rotate z*E*60translate y*N pigment{wrinkles scale
> .3}finish{ambient 1}}#end#local I=0;#while(I<5)T(I,1)T(1-I,-1)#local I=I+
> 1;#end camera{location-5*z}plane{z,37 pigment{granite color_map{[.7rgb 0]
> [1rgb 1]}}finish{ambient 2}}//                                   TenMoons


Jim Charter <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote:
> And to add to what others have said, follow these newsgroups, much of
> the blood, sweat, and tears around here is associated with just that
> problem.
>
> Here's an simple exercise: how do I get my pigment texture to
> synchronize with my bump texture?

I can do this fine by using the same pattern, but if the pigment is created
using a macro, like for the brick wall I mentioned earlier, I can't get the
normal to sync with the pigment, POV-Ray sends this message: Cannot layer over a
layered texture. Or something like that.

Thank you everyone for helping.

D103

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