Jaime Vives Piqueres wrote:
> 
>  I really like the trunk and the sidewalk... but the leaves doesn't look as 
> leaves for me, at least at this disatance (well, not many oaks here to 
> compare).

I've had a number of people say that. I kinda see what they mean, but 
since the leaves are pretty accurately shaped, I don't really know 
what's wrong or how to fix it. I suppose if worst comes to worst, I can 
wait until the leaves ACTUALLY fall off the oaks here and see what it 
looks like.

-Xplo

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Xplo Eristotle wrote:

> I've had a number of people say that. I kinda see what they mean, but
> since the leaves are pretty accurately shaped, I don't really know
> what's wrong or how to fix it. I suppose if worst comes to worst, I can
> wait until the leaves ACTUALLY fall off the oaks here and see what it
> looks like.

  One of the problems can be that some of the leaves seem to float a bit 
over the terrain, casting confusing shadows. The other is perhaps that the 
leaves thickness seems excessive, I would expect more flat leaves. You 
know, sometimes the archetype is more convincing than the real thing... :)

-- 
Jaime Vives Piqueres

La Persistencia de la Ignorancia
http://www.ignorancia.org

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Xplo Eristotle wrote:
> 
> Okay, here's what use I've put my pile of leaves to so far. This isn't
> the final version by any means, but it gives some idea of what it'll end
> up looking like. For anyone curious, the sidewalk texture is procedural.
> 

Looks promising, but the leaves should IMO lie flatter on the ground.  The
tree is very straight, making it a bit irregular and broader at the base
would be a good idea probably.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, IsoWood include,                 
TransSkin and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/  
Last updated 13 Aug. 2002 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

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I love the sidewalk and the ground. Great textures. What bothers me
about the leaves is the coloring. I wouldn't expect to find purplish and
grey leaves - at least not so many. You could try a more
green-yellow-orange-brown color scheme, and see how that works.

/ martin

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Jaime Vives Piqueres wrote:
> Xplo Eristotle wrote:
> 
> 
>>I've had a number of people say that. I kinda see what they mean, but
>>since the leaves are pretty accurately shaped, I don't really know
>>what's wrong or how to fix it. I suppose if worst comes to worst, I can
>>wait until the leaves ACTUALLY fall off the oaks here and see what it
>>looks like.
> 
> 
>   One of the problems can be that some of the leaves seem to float a bit 
> over the terrain, casting confusing shadows. The other is perhaps that the 
> leaves thickness seems excessive, I would expect more flat leaves. You 
> know, sometimes the archetype is more convincing than the real thing... :)

Being one-sided meshes, the leaves are quite thin. ;) They have a little 
bit of warping and curling, but not enough to give them much volume.

As far as the floating.. I'm aware of the problem, but I don't know how 
to fix it; the leaves are placed on the terrain with trace() and 
shouldn't be sitting at varying heights as they are now.

-Xplo

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Nice start on the project.  I live in a woods with lots of oaks, maples, and
beeches.  The oak tree base should spread out at the bottom, should be
irregular in shape, and should show the trunk branching into roots.

The leaves are to small, not irregular enough in shape, and oddly colored.
They should be larger, more differentiated in shape and size, brown to red
with more yellows and no green.

FWIW.

Jim



"Xplo Eristotle" <xpl### [at] infomagicnet> wrote in message
news:3d817716@news.povray.org...
> Okay, here's what use I've put my pile of leaves to so far. This isn't
> the final version by any means, but it gives some idea of what it'll end
> up looking like. For anyone curious, the sidewalk texture is procedural.
>
> -Xplo
>
>


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

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Jim Kress wrote:
> Nice start on the project.  I live in a woods with lots of oaks, maples, and
> beeches.  The oak tree base should spread out at the bottom, should be
> irregular in shape, and should show the trunk branching into roots.

The current trunk is just a stand-in; it will be replaced with a more 
realistic trunk later.

> The leaves are to small, not irregular enough in shape, and oddly colored.
> They should be larger, more differentiated in shape and size, brown to red
> with more yellows and no green.

The leaves are actually made more or less to scale, based on some real 
oak leaves that I went out and looked at, and AFAIK, there's no way to 
change their shape (except with uneven scaling) that wouldn't consume 
massive amounts of memory. However, I will certainly look into fixing 
the colors.

-Xplo

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The leaves being one sided meshes, it shouldn't be too hard to add a degree
of randomness to their exterior outline (use the random number generator).
The lobes in the leaves should be of varying sizes as well.

As to the size of the leaves, given the scale defined by the sidewalk
segments, the leaves are too small.  Indeed, if we assume the sidewalk is 3
feet wide, the leaves are 0.95 inches long.  The leaves on my oak trees are
at least 4 to 6 inches long.  So, we can see that the leaf sizing in your
image is off by a factor of 5 (or so)

You could keep some as small as they currently are, but the others should be
larger.  In addition, the larger leaves should be slightly curled at the
edge but flatter in the middle.


Jim

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Jim Kress wrote:
> The leaves being one sided meshes, it shouldn't be too hard to add a degree
> of randomness to their exterior outline (use the random number generator).
> The lobes in the leaves should be of varying sizes as well.

You missed my point. The reason I *can* have so many leaves is because 
meshes can be reused very efficiently. I don't know of any way to vary 
the shape of the mesh once it's created except by disproportional 
scaling, and I couldn't possibly afford to use several different meshes 
as the scene is approaching the limits of my RAM as-is.

I recall back when people were playing with grass meshes that there was 
some trick to vary the shape of the mesh after its creation (in order to 
make it fit the terrain), but I never understood how it was done, and I 
think all the sample code assumed a flat plain. :(

> As to the size of the leaves, given the scale defined by the sidewalk
> segments, the leaves are too small.  Indeed, if we assume the sidewalk is 3
> feet wide, the leaves are 0.95 inches long.

The sidewalk *is* 3 feet wide; good (or lucky) guess. The random scaling 
code should be producing leaves about 2 to 3 inches long (which is how 
long they appear around here; different species perhaps). I never 
checked against the sidewalk to see if it was so, since they didn't 
appear radically out of scale, but I will recheck that part.

> You could keep some as small as they currently are, but the others should be
> larger.  In addition, the larger leaves should be slightly curled at the
> edge but flatter in the middle.

That at least should be easy to accomplish; the mesh has some curling 
and warping at the edges already, so flattening the smaller leaves would 
reduce the effect.

Thanks for the feedback, BTW. It's very helpful, or at least it will be 
when I get around to implementing it in a couple days.

-Xplo

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> Thanks for the feedback, BTW. It's very helpful, or at least it will be

My pleasure.  I don't usually get this detailed with feedback, but I think
your project has a lot of potential so I went wild.

Jim

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