Jim Charter wrote:
> Words will surely fail...

   Specially due to my poor english skills...

> But among other things, I love the complexity, but with variation, that 
>  you get in the vegetated, eroded slope descending on the left,...I can 
> see getting one or the other, but both? And then you add the further 
> element of exposed rock structure on the vertical face!

   Multiplying two pigment functions gives fantastic complexity with 
great variation, specially if the two pigments are at different scales.

> ...ability with complexity to produce the look of landscape.  And 
> contemplating the look of a landscape is exactly what we do when we 
> climb to a vantage and gaze out.

   Yes, I was going for a sort of impressionism, giving just enough 
detail to let the brain do the rest. It requires a proper resolution, 
not too low to avoid losing details, but also not high enough to show 
the real CG nature.

> ...  But the variation you produce looks truly various not 
> simulated, and just in the way a landscape does. How do you achieve 
> that, one wonders. To automate you must establish parameters, and 
> general structures, to direct random events. The additions of scene 
> elements can never rise above a manual checklist. So landscape is not 
> infinitely various? Yet it is this sense of unlimited variation that 
> gives so much pleasure.  

   It is infinitely various in the sense that you must provide the 
isosurface function. This function is later used with a random color map 
and translated and turbulated randomly, so the variation you can get is 
really high.

 > Is your guide post creation itself, or the look of creation?

   I'm not sure to understand correctly the question... if you ask for 
my motivation, it is always to be surprised by the results, and this is 
greatly accomplished with highly random scenes like this one. I even use 
randomly guided cameras and lights placement on my "usual" scenes, as my 
composition abilities are not well developed (but I can recognize a good 
composition when I see it, which is enough with trial&error techniques).

--
Jaime

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