On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 15:55:28 EDT, "Copper Pin"
<Cop### [at] hotmailcom> said:

>This brings up another point
>though, the readme file is too long.  It is easily double the length of the
>next longest text file and most of the techniques explained were pretty
>standard fare.  The artist should have edited it down to focus on the
>special features of the image, such as the sepia tint and perhaps the
>heightfield waves, and if he felt that further explanations were in order
>then he should have created a "making of" web page and included a link to
>that.  There were 84 other images to look at, after all.

I thought it was better to be too verbose than not enough.  "Making
of" web pages are a good idea, but the web is an ephemeral thing.  One
of my pet peeves are tantalizing messages that say everything you want
to know is at some web site, only to find the link is dead.

>Not to sound too negative and end on a positive note, I must say I like the
>use of a heightfield to model the surf.  That was quite clever and the
>results are good.  I also like the reflective surface on the sand at the
>shoreline.  I bet the tide had just gone out, perfect for skimboarding!

Actually, the tide had just gone out.  I was curious about the height
of the tide so I did some investigating and figured that the runs must
have been timed to coincide with low tide.  Based on the angle of the
shadows in my reference photos, I estimated the runs to have taken
place around 2 in the afternoon.  I couldn't find tidal records that
went back that far, but I was able to determine the time of the
moonrise that day.  Comparing it to current tide charts, low tide
would have been around 2 pm that day.  There also happened to be a new
moon a couple of days before so not only was it low tide, but also the
most extreme lowest tide possible.

---
Jet Jaguar
Visit my crappy home page at http://home.att.net/~chmilnir/
MSTie #54297

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