Cousin Ricky <ric### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
>
> An isosurface forest is another option, which vanquishes memory
> concerns, but I haven't yet come up with a function that I'm satisfied with.

Have you considered using isosurfaces for *individual* tree models? I'm thinking
of maybe an egg-shaped function, plus some f_noise(...) to break up the surface.
I would imagine that maybe five to ten different tree models might suffice to
populate an entire (random) forest. And AFAIU currently, copies of the
isosurfaces *may* not take up much extra memory; Clipka mentioned this in a
recent thread (the last entry there)...

http://news.povray.org/povray.advanced-users/thread/%3C5b57c158%241%40news.povray.org%3E/
>
> As you can see, with double illumination [on]...the lit areas near the shadow
> lines [in the body of the tree] are just surreal.
>

I've noticed that too, when rendering low-resolution height_fields. It *does*
seem to be a tradeoff, between using smooth triangles vs. unsmooth, and
double_illuminate vs. no D_I. I've not been able to come up with a satisfactory
compromise.

Post a reply to this message