Thanks again!

Regarding the wind:
Since wind would be a constant turbulence on the
surface, I'd say, for most cases it would be enough
to use some pattern and displace the final nodes a
little. If you'll take a look at the Help or the Source-Code,
you'll notice that LSS_Visualize() just uses another
macro to get the different nodes out of the system, and
then uses my MMM to build the mesh. If you do that
yourself by extracting the Node-Data using

#declare Node_Array=LSS_Get_MeshDat("System-Name");

You have an array of points which you can displace however
you like. These are the actual positions of the nodes, so
you might want to take care of displacing them only along
the "calm" surface normal.
After that, just use Make_Mesh() or Make_Smooth_Mesh()
from my MMM to visualize the mesh (Make_Smooth_Mesh
requires another macro beforeend to calculate the surface-normals,
but thats all supplied in MMM).

If you want wind which actually creates small waves which will
interact with objects... I'll have to think about that. It should be
possible to somehow generate a wave-state in which not single
drops are placed, but rather wave-fronts. The algorithm would then
move these onward... I'll have to think about that. If you've got some
specific suggestions on how much you'd want to define yourself
(like: use one image with painted waves along with an
initial direction, thats the first idea that pops into my mind), tell
me. I'll look into it. Shouldn't be that difficult though (unless you
want me to use functions, I'm no good at that yet).

Regarding the waves:
The system actually creates the waves in front of the moving object,
or, to be more precise, around the nodes that are newly blocked
(which are, on moving objects, the ones up front). Pushing that
wave around would make things more difficult, as I'd have to calculate
in which overall direction the object is moving at that point (which
gets pretty tricky when the object is just rotating). They actually
do push a small wave in front of them, but it doesn't grow and
accumulate, if thats what you mean. The problem is that the algorithm
doesn't actually simulate masses of water, but rather just works on
the height of the nodes and interpolates them to the surrounding
nodes. Thats the reason why waves cannot have different speeds or
"fall over" and create overhangs. The code is really complex as it is,
and IMHO, for a better simulation, a different underlying concept should
be used, with which overhangs, different speeded waves due to
"overrolling" etc are possible. But thats probably too difficult and
time-consuming for pure POV-Code.

Regards,
Tim

-- 
Tim Nikias v2.0
Homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de/no_lights
Email: Tim### [at] gmxde

> Tim,
>
> Thanks for all this. I have not changed my mind regarding my earlier
> statement: Terrific work!
>
> I'm wondering (for some time now; even posted my idea some months ago) how
> to add wind to the algoritm. Maybe you have a plan for this? I could just
> average the wind and the LSSM of course, but it needs deeper integration
to
> interact with the enviroment. Maybe I can figure something out, when I
read
> your comments in the updated LSSM... Or maybe 'the master' is more
qualified
> to tell me, what I can do.
>
> Wind aside. I see it's possible to make nice trails behind moving objects.
> Do you have ideas how to push the water in front of a moving object? You
> know, in real life there is a wave in many such cases.
>
> I'm thinking about using the LSSM in a large area of water, for example a
> river or ocean. It seems unnecessary to parse the entire area with the
LSSM,
> but it's pretty easy to fade out "your data", and fade in the data of the
> ..lets say "the river". The only problem is the wind. Even if LSSM would
> support a kind of wind, if the algoritm is not the same as the river, it
may
> not look the same.. (This is just something to consider before working on
> LSSM - wind)
>
> I hope you don't mind my ideas. Of course you are free to take a vacation
> from these macros, in that case, just ignore what I said. I think your
> macros are well done and already support enough things to be useful. I
> browsed around on google to find alternative water systems (non-pov or
> whatever) and I found mostly junk. Your system looks good in comparison. I
> hope people will begin to use it.
>
> Regards,
> Hugo
>
>

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