Tim Nikias v2.0 wrote:
>> But anyway, all comments appreciated!
>
> Cute! :-)

Hehe, it's funny how everybody says that. I never thought of it as cute.
:)

> The animation looks kinda blocky though, no smooth
> rotation or movement of those little arrow-thingies.

It's somewhat smooth, but they *can* change direction rather quickly.
Part of it is due to the mpg-compression though.

> How exactly do you calculate it? Do you use the "standard"
> boids System (avoid collisions, seek goal, accompany friends)?

I skipped "accompany friends" since it's not necessary when they have
the same goal anyway. But I did use "steer up with friends" which is to
move in the same direction of nearby boids. There's a lot of other stuff
in the algorithm too though. Code to avoid collisions more when moving
fast than when moving still, and also have more flocking behavior when
moving fast, and code to make the boids move slower when going uphill
than when going downhill etc.

> And I'd guess mapping the boids onto the heightfield
> is more or less the difficult path?

Well, only because the whole simulation is written in Java, and I had to
write my own height-field handling class with methods that resemble the
trace function and I also wrote my own vector-class with methods
equivalent to vcross(), vdot(), vlength(), v_axis_rotate() etc... Once
all that was done, it was not a big problem confining the boids to the
surface of the heightfield. And no, no trace() inside POV-Ray was
used... :)

> I really need some more background information before I
> can start thinking about what to try. I'm more the
> algorithmic guy.
> :-)

Well, it's not really algorithmic advise I'm after... ;) It's more
observations like "Hey a few of those boids are walking sideways too
much - that looks odd!". (I did intentionally make the boids be able to
move sideways and backwards a little, but I think it's maybe too much at
the moment...)

Rune
--
3D images and anims, include files, tutorials and more:
rune|vision:  http://runevision.com **updated Mar 9**
POV-Ray Ring: http://webring.povray.co.uk

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