> Hi for all who are interested:
> An update of the fern is attached. More detail at the single leaves, macro
> optimisation and extended shape of the entire wing (irregularities and
> torsion). Some more minor updates.

I really like these fern images you've been posting. You've really paid a
great deal of attention to detail here, I especially like the small random
rips and tears in the leaves. However to get the full effect I think a
rendering of a whole plant would be good, its hard to tell from one leaf how
well it will work as a whole.

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> Been following this a little.  Mimics a fern very well, only that the gray
> color for older leaves could use a brown-gold coppery color I believe.

You're right. I'm still not satisfied with the texture. For new and "adult"
leaves it's quite well. For the old ones it doesn't fit yet. I'm still
working on that. (please note that the algorithm which assembles the whole
"wing" is still quite experimental. The sizes aren't ok yet and the old
leaves aren't full integrated in it)

> As for the close-up, unless used for rendering insect life or other such
> small scale scenes that fern leaf would be great for general vegetation as

I think I will reuse the small, single leaf (not the whole wing) as a leaf
of grass. Just changing the proportions (make it taller and longer) would
result in a perfect grass, wouldn't it?

> seen from a distance.  Is it computationally intensive and slow or
> something?  Or would a full fern plant, and many of them, be easily (read
> that as quickly) rendered?

That is hard to tell for me since my computer is a very old P200 (note: not
a PII or PIII, just the very basic Pentium even without any MMX or so...)
So ANY render takes a while on my PC ;-)

Basically:
A single leaf is rendered quickly. It's an automatically computed mesh with
an adaptive number of smooth_triangles. The triangles are fully computed and
differ from leaf to leaf. The main part of rendering time is parsing.
Tracing itself is rather quickly.
The picture I posted (the full wing) was rendered at 640x480 AA0.3 and it
took approx 5minutes on my old P200.

Some data:
a single leaf holds 20-120 smooth triangles (2 times 10-60, left and right
half) depending on the degree of "wrinkles". The fern I posted holds 2 times
30 leaves which makes approx. 60 meshes with about 600 smooth_triangles. To
build a realistic, complete fern it may take up to 10 or even 20 wings.

regards,

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Juergen Scharfy wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> Some data:
> a single leaf holds 20-120 smooth triangles (2 times 10-60, left and right
> half) depending on the degree of "wrinkles". The fern I posted holds 2 times
> 30 leaves which makes approx. 60 meshes with about 600 smooth_triangles. To
> build a realistic, complete fern it may take up to 10 or even 20 wings.
> 

It would probably be much faster if you make the whole wing one mesh.

BTW, the central fold seems to have some problems, the 'leafs' do not join
smoothly.

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

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> It would probably be much faster if you make the whole wing one mesh.

Since every leaf has two different textures and every leaf within a wing
differs in colour and texture from the others I don't think that it is a
good idea to make one big mesh. AFAIK it's not possible to give every
triangle within a mesh a different texture? (I'm working with POV 3.1g since
the last beta I copied (3.5Beta9) stopped working on 15th of Jan.)

> BTW, the central fold seems to have some problems, the 'leafs' do not join
> smoothly.

The central fold of the wing or of the leaves?

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> I really like these fern images you've been posting. You've really paid a
> great deal of attention to detail here, I especially like the small random

Yes, the detail is important for my scene since at least one "wing" will be
in the front of the scene.

> rips and tears in the leaves. However to get the full effect I think a
> rendering of a whole plant would be good, its hard to tell from one leaf
how
> well it will work as a whole.

Of course. Right now I just finished the basics of the small leaves. All the
rest is very experimental.
I'm very eger to create a full fern to see if it's realistic enough!
SY

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> 
> Since every leaf has two different textures and every leaf within a wing
> differs in colour and texture from the others I don't think that it is a
> good idea to make one big mesh. AFAIK it's not possible to give every
> triangle within a mesh a different texture? (I'm working with POV 3.1g since
> the last beta I copied (3.5Beta9) stopped working on 15th of Jan.)
> 

You can, uv-mapping would be another possibility, i don't know which uses
less memory.

> > BTW, the central fold seems to have some problems, the 'leafs' do not join
> > smoothly.
> 
> The central fold of the wing or of the leaves?

Of the wing.

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

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> > good idea to make one big mesh. AFAIK it's not possible to give every
> > triangle within a mesh a different texture? (I'm working with POV 3.1g
since
> > the last beta I copied (3.5Beta9) stopped working on 15th of Jan.)
> >
>
> You can, uv-mapping would be another possibility, i don't know which uses
> less memory.

How? I tried it but got an error. As well there is no hint about textured
mesh-triangles in the help.
I was looking for uv_mapping as well. I found it in 3.5b9 but NOT in 3.1g.

Am I too stupid?

> > The central fold of the wing or of the leaves?
>
> Of the wing.

I just rewrote the complete code of the wing. Anyway, it was only a testing
code. Now it looks much more realistic than before.
Have a look at the new update!

regards
SY

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> 
> How? I tried it but got an error. As well there is no hint about textured
> mesh-triangles in the help.
> I was looking for uv_mapping as well. I found it in 3.5b9 but NOT in 3.1g.
> 

uv-mapping is only available in 3.5/megapov, single triangles can only be
textured with predeclared textures, this is mentioned in the help file:

"Any number of triangle and/or smooth_triangle statements can be used and
each of those triangles can be individually textured by assigning a
texture identifier to it. The texture has to be declared before the mesh
is parsed. It is not possible to use texture definitions inside the
triangle or smooth triangle statements. This is a restriction that is
necessary for an efficient storage of the assigned textures."

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

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> "Any number of triangle and/or smooth_triangle statements can be used and
> each of those triangles can be individually textured by assigning a
> texture identifier to it. The texture has to be declared before the mesh
> is parsed. It is not possible to use texture definitions inside the
> triangle or smooth triangle statements. This is a restriction that is
> necessary for an efficient storage of the assigned textures."

Hmm. I tried it but got a parsing error. Texture is predeclared anyway.
Maybe I misplaced it. I can try it again.
This would be a way to simulate "ill" leaves. I'm shure this would look
nice.

Thanks,
regards
SY

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> Hi for all who are interested:
> An update of the fern is attached. More detail at the single leaves, macro
> optimisation and extended shape of the entire wing (irregularities and
> torsion). Some more minor updates.
>
> A Detail shot will follow
>
> have fun!
> SY

Much better, IMHO!

cukk
--
light_source{-9 1}#macro p(N,_,Y)sphere{<-_,Y-7,15>,.5pigment{color
<2,3,1>/(mod(N,2)?3:9)}}#if(-_<9)p(div(N,2),_-1,Y)#end#end p(463141
9,9)p(69973,9,8)p(201075,9,7)camera{}p(69973,9,6)p(489301,9,5)// KK

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