Mike Smith wrote:
> 
> Ken
> 
> Thanks for the advice (and also the previous advice on heigth
> field editors a while back!). I tinkered with some of the settings
> you suggested; alas to no avail! I tried using the sky sphere and
> fog separately and together and they appeared to make little
> difference. I assume I can't be using them correctly, particularly
> the fog option. I also tried using cylindrical light but this totally
> washed out the image. As you can see I'm not particularly au
> fait with all the settings and POV itself. One thing I forgot to
> mention, but is obvious when you look at the images is that it is
> rendered looking vertically down onto the landscape.
> 
> As an aside, how can I find the bounds of the coordinates
> currently being used for the imported heigthfield??
> 
> Thanks
> 
> mike

I'm not sure what you mean by the bounds. If you mean the scaling of
the HF it will always be x=1 z=1 and y = 0-1 depending on the height
of the pixels for that location. The overall scale of the HF will
be determined by the final scale used in the HF statement. If you need
a net list of all elevations on the HF that is dependent upon the
software producing it and it's capabilities.


  Try the code below which is a stripped down version of the original
with some changes made. I lowered the ambient from 1.5 to .12. the
ambient when set that high will take over almost complete control
of the shadows which in your case is something yu don't want to do.
A higher diffuse value will make the pigment used more reactive to
the light tht falls on it and will produce cleaner shadow lines.

  I removed your HF image name to include my own so you will have to
replace it. I also scaled the HF by half because the Hf image I used
was to small to gieve me any definition with the scale you had and
I lowered the camera and cut halfed the distance of the lights to
reflect this. You can change it back by doubling the camera height
and the light distances to have what you had before. The effects
should not change but you be the judge of that.
  I think it is closer to what you wanted but without the original Hf
image to play with and the reference photo here to compare to it is
all subjective. I added a gradient texture to give me an idea of what
the elevations were but you could easily change that to anything you
want even back to the grey you were using before.

  camera {location <0.0, 600.0, -0.1>look_at <0.0, 0.0, 0.0>}

  // Try different settings below to see difference

  //light_source { <100.0, 54.0, -200.0>rgb 1}
  //light_source { <200.0, 54.0, -300.0>rgb 1}
  //light_source { <300.0, 54.0, -400.0>rgb 1}
  light_source { <400.0, 54.0, -500.0>rgb 1}
  //light_source { <500.0, 54.0, -600.0>rgb 1}
  //light_source { <600.0, 54.0, -700.0>rgb 1}

  height_field  {
   tga "mt-h.tga"
    smooth
     texture{
      pigment{
       gradient y
        color_map{
         [  0 rgb<0,.6,0>]
         [.30 rgb<.9,.87,.72>*.75]
         [.30 rgb 1]}
        scale 1
        }
       }

   finish {
          ambient 0.2 // Can take orver control of brightness keep low
          diffuse 1.0 // Makes the pigment more reactive
                      // to the light that strikes it
   }

    translate <-0.5, 0.0, -0.5>
   scale<1200, 64,1200 >*0.5
 }

-- 
Ken Tyler

mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net

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