On Thu, 2005-06-02 at 02:18 +0100, Mike Williams wrote:
> This version uses objects for all the stars. There are 55000 spheres in this
> scene.
> Because they are all real objects rather than texture artifacts, it's
> possible to use anti-aliassing.

Good point about the anti-aliasing vs. texture artifacts.  I found out
the hard way one morning.  This was back in 1995 I was still running on
a 486 DX2-66.  I had been modeling a scene for a better part of a week.
A little cafe setting with a star filled window on one side.  I did the
usual granite texture scaled so small that pattern becomes star
field-like.  I needed to get the image to the queue of the dye-sub
printer in the morning so I'd have it ready for a presentation in my
afternoon class.  I did a little math in my head and figured with 0.25
anti-aliasing at 300 dpi at the worst case the render would take 12
hours.  So I finished tweaking at about 6 PM and set it up to run
through the night.

I had never done any tests to see how the picture looked with
anti-aliasing.  I mean why?, I had been using it for 4 years on all my
final pictures.  I knew what it did, it just made hard edges smoother.
But this was my first picture attempting to use the artifact method of
star field generation.

Of course everyone knows what happened.  My nice points of light had
become faint squiggly lines.  I didn't have time to re-render and
especially no time to test different textures at that high of resolution
with anti-aliasing turned on.  So I just submitted the picture as it
was--hoping no one would notice.  As these things go everyone did
notice, but after I explained exactly what happened they were even more
impressed that:  I understood the problem, had a solution, and were
absolutely impressed; after it sank in that yes I really did code all of
objects and textures in the picture--which was the actual subject of my
presentation.

-- 
Chris

Post a reply to this message