> 
> Hi there, all who are interested in ferns ;-)
> Another update after I rewrote the code for the wing completely and studied
> intensively my fern in my living room....
> 
> The shape of the wing is fine now, as well the leaves. Some open points are
> still colouring while aging and the texture of the central fold of the wing.
> (It still misses it's "hairs")

The leafs look very good now, but i think they still do not join smoothly
with the stem.

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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> I like these fern images. The only thing that seems unrealistic is that
> stem, made of shiney cylinders and spheres, it seems. Think you could fix

You are right. It really looks like plastic. Strange enough, the leaf I have
here (a real one) looks also like plastic. But the stem there is oviously
smaller and not that smooth. Maybe this is the problem.
I'll workon that. Thanks!

> that up a bit? Looks too plastic. Otherwise it's pretty darn realistic,
and
> I'd like to see an include file. =)

No problem. As soon as it grows out of the "beta" stage ;)

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> wonderful!

THX

> How fast is it? (Both trace-time and parse-time)

You mean how slow? ;-))
Just kidding. Before I talk about speed you need to know on which CPU I'm
working. My PC is pretty old and runs a P200. Please note that it is a very
first, old Pentium (no MMX, no PII,PIII or even PIV). The good old plain
P200 (you remember the FPU float division problem?). This old P200 drives a
very old Win95 (one of the very firs releases)

Now about speed.

The big picture I posted was rendered in 640x480 AA0.3 and took in total
10min 33sec. I think thats not too bad.
The picture shows two wings, the big one has 2x 30 leaves and the small one
2x 20.

regards,
SY

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> The leafs look very good now, but i think they still do not join smoothly
> with the stem.

Hm. I will have to do a close-up of the stem.
As far as I analysed my fern in the living room is the junction of the
leaves to the stem quite strange. The leaves overlap the stem so that you
hardly see it. Only in the upper regions (where the density of the leaves is
lower) it comes out.
Anyway the stem is an open point since it texture isn't right yet. The
colour should be green on the top and brownish at the root.

thanks and regards
SY

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A slow computer is a good way to force one to code stuff the right way.  :o)
It looks much better now! I think the leafs are best at a distance because
the texture doesn't show the venes realistic at close-up. But in most scenes
this won't be a problem and it would probably be meaningless to spend more
resources at the tiny venes.

I don't have a real leaf in front of me, but the long one seems too long and
stiff at the small end. You seem to be using a fixed distance between each
leaf that makes me wonder if the real thing looks that way.

Great that you will be sharing the code with us!  :o)  I look forward to
that!

Hugo

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> A slow computer is a good way to force one to code stuff the right way.
:o)

Exactly :)
That is one of the main reasons why I still use this old PC. Beside the fact
that I'm too lazy to set up a new system ;-)

> It looks much better now! I think the leafs are best at a distance because
> the texture doesn't show the venes realistic at close-up. But in most
scenes

Yep. As mentioned the texture isn't finished yet. Maybe I will add som "ill"
leaves as well.

> this won't be a problem and it would probably be meaningless to spend more
> resources at the tiny venes.

Yes and no. Since I want to have a close-up in my scene it is necessary for
me. Of course not for others. I also will add a "level of detail" flag to
skip unnessecary details for ferns in the background or to render quick
previews just for arranging the wings.

> I don't have a real leaf in front of me, but the long one seems too long
and

Correct it is too long. Additionally there is an optical effect due to the
positioning of the camera.

> stiff at the small end. You seem to be using a fixed distance between each
> leaf that makes me wonder if the real thing looks that way.

That is one thing I analysed very carefully. In fact the leaves have almost
the same distance over the entire wing. Only at the far end (the place where
new leaves are "born") the distance is a little bit smaller than on the
root. This happens because the wing grows only by unfolding new leaves at
the far end. The roots stay the same and get more and more wood-like.
But you are right that currently I ignored this fact and placed all the
leaves in the same distance. This is corrected within minutes but yesterday
I was too tired and it was already 1am....

> Great that you will be sharing the code with us!  :o)  I look forward to
> that!

No problem. As long nobody tries to convince me that someone else wrote the
code.... ;-)
There are no fancy POV tricks in the code. It only consists of macros
computing more or less complex ,mathematical functions. Quite boring I
guess.

regards
SY

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>
> Another update after I rewrote the code for the wing completely and
studied
> intensively my fern in my living room....

    Actually, both tapers look correct. Your first one was more typical of
ferns grown in more light, and your second is symptomatic of ferns grown in
less light. Also, the first looked more like classic "Boston" fern, while
your second is more the newer "Crinkled Boston" fern.

    The bad leaves you had on your first tries remind me of my days in the
ferneries of Peirson (the fern capital of the world). If fertilizer had been
spread while the fern was still wet with dew, we would get alot of that.
Plus a wind storm can cause something similar among the new sprouts.

    Both are great and I hope we get source when it is done...

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I thought that the first image was allright. But now...WOW. This looks
excellent.


news:3c475db4@news.povray.org...

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>     Actually, both tapers look correct. Your first one was more typical of
> ferns grown in more light, and your second is symptomatic of ferns grown
in
> less light. Also, the first looked more like classic "Boston" fern, while
> your second is more the newer "Crinkled Boston" fern.

I'm amazed that you can even tell the fern's family when looking at my
pictures *g*
That's a great proove for their realism.

> ferneries of Peirson (the fern capital of the world). If fertilizer had
been
> spread while the fern was still wet with dew, we would get alot of that.
> Plus a wind storm can cause something similar among the new sprouts.

I didn't know how the "dead" leaves happen but I saw some on my fern.
Possibly due to activities of my cat ,-)

>     Both are great and I hope we get source when it is done...

No problem. I will post the two includes so everyone can build those ferns
for his scenes. A lot of variables control shape and age of the fern so it
is easy to create a great variety of ferns. I think I will have to write
some manual *g*

regards
SY

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> I thought that the first image was allright. But now...WOW. This looks
> excellent.

Thanks. If you like the last post you should take a look on the latest one I
posted right now. In my opinion it is even better!

regards
SY

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