Mike Thorn wrote:
> scott wrote:
>> Well I added something better than a flat plane, and moved the
>> camera under the clouds.
>>
>> For some reason it rendered *really* slow (and we're talking pixels
>> per minute here) if I tried to use the media clouds and the 10000
>> trees at the same time.  So I rendered it twice, once without the
>> clouds, and once without the trees.  Then joined them together in
>> paint shop.  Took about an hour to render in total at 1600x1200
>> resolution.  I think it would have taken a year to do it all in one
>> go!
>
> I can wholly relate to slow render times. :) I'll use it on my kids,
> when I have a few, and tell them it builds character.
>
> I like the sunset a lot. It was a little confusing before, with the
> clouds below the camera and all.

Well I was on a plane when I first saw it and thought "wow" :-)

> One question from someone who has had
> mostly just static placement experience: how did you place the trees
> on the terrain - I understand random placement - but how did you get
> them to stay on top of the heightfield?

Well firstly, they're not entirely random, I made them more likely to go in
the lower bits of the terrain, and impossible for them to go on some of the
highest bits.  It looked a bit silly with them perched on the high bits of
the land.

And to get them at the right height, just use "trace".  It was the first
time I had used this, but remember seeing it elsewhere so looked it up in
the help docs.  Pretty easy to use.

> Great work. Some focal blur would be really cool too (but that would
> kill your render time badly).

Maybe I'll leave it running on my work PC over xmas!

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