First and foremost, my sincerest apologies if this has been posted 
before, it's kind of late and I haven't looked at the archives or 
searches thoroughly (although if this was answered in a past article, a 
link to the article via the HTTP archive would be nice).

I'm using POV-Ray 3.6 on Windows XP, on a Pentium Celeron just over 
2Ghz.

What I want to do is sort of "burn" objects, namely mutated "plants", by 
sort of surrounding them with (a) flame(s) so it(they) looks like it's
(they're) in the middle of burning.  I have a series of objects in rows 
and columns (created by using while-loops) and I want to make it look 
like the whole lot of them are burning.

I can get the objects themselves to appear on a flat plane:

[snip]
#declare Dirt_Color = texture { pigment { color rgb <0.25, 0.125, 0> } }
#declare Plant_Color = texture { pigment { color rgb <0,0.5,0> } }
#declare Fruit_Color = texture { pigment { color rgb <0,0.5,1> } }

#declare PlantStem = cone { <0,0,0>, 1 <0,23,0>, 0.1 } 
#declare Fruit = torus { 0.8, 0.2 texture {Fruit_Color} }

#declare Plant = merge {
  object {PlantStem}
  object {Fruit scale 2 translate <2,7,0> scale <1,1,1>}
  object {Fruit scale 1.5 translate <2,13,0> scale <-1,1,1>}
  object {Fruit scale 1 translate <1.5,16,0> scale <1,1,1>}
  object {Fruit scale 0.75 translate <1,22,0> scale <-1,1,1>}
  
  sphere { <0,4,0>, 1.5 }
  texture { Plant_Color }
  scale 1/40
}

#declare FieldPlants = union {
#declare X = -3;
#while (X <= 3)
  #declare Z = -3;
  #while (Z <= 7)
    object { Plant rotate <0,(0-90+(rand(TS)*180)),0> translate <X, 0, 
Z> }
    #declare Z = Z + (1/2);
  #end
  #declare X = X+ (1/2);
#end
[end snip]

I've tried using Rune's Particle System [http://runevision.com/] and 
using rows and columns of piles of blobs, to no avail.  I believe that I 
might be using these wrong, or that there is another way to do this that 
I am not thinking of or have not found yet.

I remember also mention of the media system in the tutorial, although I 
can't figure out if this would be useful to me, and how it might be 
useful, if at all.  I can't figure out how to use it, either.

Can anyone give me any advice as to what I might do to achieve the 
affect I want?  Is there anything you suggest I look into?  It needn't 
look extremely realistic, it should just look mostly like flames or 
fire.  Any ideas, suggestions, or help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
-Mike C

Post a reply to this message

Although this is a shameless plug, my own I/O Particle System, Parsys, comes
with an example scene depicting a sphere going up in flames, and being
extinguished by some water. The animation can be seen on my homepage, at
http://www.nolights.de, in the Animation-Section, I/O Particles.

Is that what you're after? If so, the scene is included in the ZIP and you
should be able to easily modify it to your needs after you've worked your
way through the example scenes and the HTML-Introduction.

Regards,
Tim

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>

Post a reply to this message