Hi Tek!

The "problem" with the clouds is of course only a very minor point.

> I find clouds look more sunny if they really saturate out to white in places.

Yes, but in my opinion the saturated area shouldn't be too large, their
uniformity diminishes the 3D appearance. I've made a height_field from
some of the clouds, "pigmented" with original colors, but the (almost)
saturated upper 10% painted red: I think this area is a bit too large
and suppose a cloud with smaller "red plateaus" will look more "3D".
Perhaps it is impossible to make such summer clouds because reality has
a *much* higher contrast than a monitor.

My first idea for a name was "LAWN MOWER CHALLENGE" -- O.K., probably
not what you are looking for ...
You could name it "Oh, island in the sun", put it on the desktop and
replace the windows startup melody by Harry Belafonte's song (although
he surely hasn't meant *this* island :)
I don't think anyone looking at this picture is interested in a name,
even something like "PIC00738" can't ruin this nice scene.

   Sputnik


<SDL for height field>

// height field of clouds of grassy julia
// provide "grassy_final_clouds.png",
// adjust declarations of W, H and camera location

// +SP8 +EP8 +A0.1 +AM2 +R2 +FN

#declare H = 309; // height of image for HF
#declare W = 533; // width of image for HF

height_field { png "grassy_final_clouds.png" smooth
  texture {
    pigment { gradient y
      pigment_map {
        [ .9 image_map { png "grassy_final_clouds.png" } rotate 90*x ]
        [ .9 red 1 ]
        }
      }
    finish { ambient .4 diffuse .6 }
    }
  translate <-0.5, 0, -0.5>
  scale <W, 100, H>
  }

#macro Pic()
  box { -y, x+z
    texture {
      pigment { image_map { png "grassy_final_clouds.png" } rotate 90*x }
      finish { ambient .4 diffuse .6 }
      }
    // no "}" for box
  #end

Pic() translate <-0.5, 0, -0.5> scale <W, 1, H> }

Pic() translate <-0.5, 0, -0.5> scale <W, 1, H>/2
  translate <0.1*W, 0, -0.9*H>
  }

light_source { <-1, 3, -2>*10000, rgb 1 }

camera {
  right 4*x up 3*y direction 6*z sky y
  location -1100*z look_at 0
  rotate <35, -30, 0>
  translate -100*y
  }

// END

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