Jim Kress wrote:
> The leaves being one sided meshes, it shouldn't be too hard to add a degree
> of randomness to their exterior outline (use the random number generator).
> The lobes in the leaves should be of varying sizes as well.

You missed my point. The reason I *can* have so many leaves is because 
meshes can be reused very efficiently. I don't know of any way to vary 
the shape of the mesh once it's created except by disproportional 
scaling, and I couldn't possibly afford to use several different meshes 
as the scene is approaching the limits of my RAM as-is.

I recall back when people were playing with grass meshes that there was 
some trick to vary the shape of the mesh after its creation (in order to 
make it fit the terrain), but I never understood how it was done, and I 
think all the sample code assumed a flat plain. :(

> As to the size of the leaves, given the scale defined by the sidewalk
> segments, the leaves are too small.  Indeed, if we assume the sidewalk is 3
> feet wide, the leaves are 0.95 inches long.

The sidewalk *is* 3 feet wide; good (or lucky) guess. The random scaling 
code should be producing leaves about 2 to 3 inches long (which is how 
long they appear around here; different species perhaps). I never 
checked against the sidewalk to see if it was so, since they didn't 
appear radically out of scale, but I will recheck that part.

> You could keep some as small as they currently are, but the others should be
> larger.  In addition, the larger leaves should be slightly curled at the
> edge but flatter in the middle.

That at least should be easy to accomplish; the mesh has some curling 
and warping at the edges already, so flattening the smaller leaves would 
reduce the effect.

Thanks for the feedback, BTW. It's very helpful, or at least it will be 
when I get around to implementing it in a couple days.

-Xplo

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