I'm just playing around with the macros and got the one or other idea about
them. My model is my first more complex work with wings which collected some
dust at my hard drive during the last two years. It's a kind of dragon and seems
very suited for Jaimes occlusion map macros. Some years ago I searched the
wikipedia for unusaul clocks and found a picture of an chinese incense alarm
clock which was heavily overexposed to a flashlight. Unfortunatelly the
overexposion was at one of the most interesting parts, the head of the dragon.
Google for "incense alarm clock" and you will find the picture very soon.

One of my thoughts was about using the GIMP. I may be wrong with that, but as I
understand Gaussian blur, it takes the surrounding pixels and average them with
a two dimensional Gaussian distribution. It should be possible to gain this with
nearly the same approach as Jaime did with his repair_seams.pov, only adjusting
to the pixel level by using an appropriate fraction of image_width for his
bake_padding value. May be one has to put the central point more than once into
an texture_map and average them. Has someone tried this so far? This could make
the GIMP step superfluous.

The next idea is due to the fact that the occlusion maps are used as
pigment_patterns. Can there be a gain expected using hdri-images in place of the
png?

Best regards,
Michael

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