Have you tried the combo mesh grass in the foreground and your textured grass in the
background? Would they match well?

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Jonathan.

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> Have done, but he seems to may have lost it...

I didn't say I'd lost it, I just said I didn't know where I last saved it! I
still have it. As a matter of fact, I found it this morning and started
getting it back into working shape. I'll send it to you later today.

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"Tony[B]" wrote:
> I didn't say I'd lost it, I just said I didn't
> know where I last saved it!

That's why I said "may"! ;)

> I still have it. As a matter of fact, I found it
> this morning and started getting it back into
> working shape. I'll send it to you later today.

Thanks, I'd be interested in trying it out and do some comparing. :)

Rune
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However, Gilles' macro can only create grass on flat surfaces AFAIK. Since
> using many copies of the same mesh isn't possible to the same extent when
> covering hills with grass, maybe doing that with mesh grass would still be
> less efficient, or even impossible on many machines?

Actually it's not very difficult for a good coder to modify the code and
make it "drop" the original grass patch on a surface following a grid,
thanks to the trace function and to the reorient macro. Check the slope
angle (to avoid putting patches where they shouldn't grow), add some
randomness and that's all.
http://www.oyonale.com/ldc/images/arbreteledetail1.jpg

The code was written for this specific picture and is not generic. I can
send it to you, it's just very ugly. Mick Hazelgrove did that with his own
macro too I guess. Note that I'm talking about covering the surface by
repeating a square, flat grass patch, not a patch that would fit the
underlying surface. The trick to optimize this is to make it in 2 steps, one
that creates the patch file and one that creates the patches coordinates
file. Then I use the coordinates file to save on the parsing time or even
add other layers of objects.
It is going to be efficient anyway because meshes are always fast.
I attached a test I did some years ago using a similar routine, but with a
car instead of a grass patch.

Your macro may be easier to use though and better-looking in some cases (in
fact I just have a project where it's going to be handy).

G.


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Attachments:
Download 'trafic03a.jpg' (43 KB)

Preview of image 'trafic03a.jpg'

"Gilles Tran" wrote:
> Actually it's not very difficult for a good coder to
> modify the code and make it "drop" the original grass
> patch on a surface following a grid, thanks to the
> trace function and to the reorient macro.

Aha, I thought that flat patches would not fit well on curved surfaces, so
that each blade of grass would have to be placed individually, but
apparently small flat patches fit on curved surfaces just fine.

> It is going to be efficient anyway because meshes
> are always fast.

But even when optimized, the memory requirement (and parse time) can become
huge when working with very large fields of grass. That's my niche I
guess... ;)

> Your macro may be easier to use though and better-looking
> in some cases

I don't know about the better-looking part, but it may be a bit easier to
use.

> (in fact I just have a project where it's
> going to be handy).

I'm honored! I'll try to get the include file finished within this week.

Rune
--
3D images and anims, include files, tutorials and more:
Rune's World:  http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk (updated Mar 19)
POV-Ray Users: http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk/povrayusers/
POV-Ray Ring:  http://webring.povray.co.uk

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