Charles Krause wrote:

> >Wow, this is definetly incredible. The first, and I feel the most
> important,
> >thank you for giving proper credit where credit is due, i.e. those whose
> works
> >allowed you to accomplish this work. Your idea for lettering on the pencils
> >would be a great addition - I'm wondering about including "wear" and "use"
> for
> >the erasers - you know, where the eraser is worn away and has sublte
> graphite
> >smears.
>
> Both can be accomplished by varying the length of the eraser (although this
> makes for perfectly even wear I guess ), and altering the eraser texture.
> for uneven wear, maybe truncating with a slightly angled, slowly changing,
> very smooth heightfield?

That sounds like a good place to start. The eraser shouldn't wear evenly seeing
as they never do in real life (ever have trouble proving a solution in Trig? -
@#%&* ) - there were many a time when my erasers were haggard and badly mishapen
before the lead wore through it's first sharpening.     ;-]

>
>
> I would also think that adding a variation to the normal for the paint
> texture would be a good idea, as most pencils I have are beat up. Heck -
> most have teeth marks :)

;-]    We used to have "pencil fights" in school where one person would hold a
pencil by both ends and the other would then try to break it by 'snapping' their
pencil onto it, they would then switch roles and continue this back and forth
until a pencil broke - winner recieved a fresh pencil from the loser. So, along
with the abused eraser and teeth marks were cracks and dents.

>
> >My second suggestion may be a bit nit-picky but not meant to be: Where
> >the lead and wood meet is never so cleanly clipped - at least never has it
> been
> >for the some-odd-millions of pencil I've chewed through in life.
>
> Yeah - this bothered me as well. Not 100% sure how to do this though, unless
> one makes the shear_cone and slightly wavering mesh?

Would it be possible to layer or map the wood and lead textures, then apply it
as a  _planar_ with some turbulence?
really quick example:
 texture {
   planar
   turbulence 0.099
   texture_map {
      [0.6 Wood_texture ]
      [1.0 Lead_texture   ]
    }
}

>
> >My third
> >suggestion: The ability to vary the sharpness/dullness of the lead tip.
>
> Yes - this occured to me as well, and should not be hard, just truncate the
> lead point, and cap it with a sphere. In fact you could have a %age rounding
> variable.
>
> >Based on
> >the resulting image, your macro seems a very nice (and useful) piece of
> work, I
> >can't wait to try it out when you're ready to share.    ;-]
> >
>
> Thanks :)

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