"Mike Thorn" <mik### [at] realitycheckmultimediacom> wrote in message
news:41b71d04@news.povray.org...
> For the SW POVers out there...
>
> I found this lurking around in the depths of my computer, a quick
> radiosity excercise from long ago. Someday I'll figure out how HDRI
> works and redo it.

Cute!  And well-modelled too; you managed to get the textures looking about
right as well.

Now it's time for rendering the obligatory arrayed-army of them ;)

rendertime++

Lance.

thezone - thezone.firewave.com.au
thehandle - www.thehandle.com

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Lance Birch wrote:
> Now it's time for rendering the obligatory arrayed-army of them ;)
> 
> rendertime++

The army is on its way, pending the learning of a couple features.

And rendertime? You wouldn't believe how long it takes to parse a 
100x100 array of these guys...I actually ran out of memory trying to 
create a 200x200 army. If the converter didn't do such wacky things with 
the positioning (it uses matrices for everything and I hate those) it 
would be easier to align the camera in such a way that minimal numbers 
of units could be used with maximum exposure and effect.

~Mike

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"Mike Thorn" <mik### [at] realitycheckmultimediacom> wrote in message
news:41b7c987$1@news.povray.org...
> Lance Birch wrote:
> > Now it's time for rendering the obligatory arrayed-army of them ;)
> >
> > rendertime++
>
> The army is on its way, pending the learning of a couple features.
>
> And rendertime? You wouldn't believe how long it takes to parse a
> 100x100 array of these guys...I actually ran out of memory trying to
> create a 200x200 army. If the converter didn't do such wacky things with
> the positioning (it uses matrices for everything and I hate those) it
> would be easier to align the camera in such a way that minimal numbers
> of units could be used with maximum exposure and effect.

Heh, yes I figured as much :)

Did you make the model in another program and are importing it into POV-Ray?
If so, don't do the duplication before converting it to a POV-Ray file...
convert the model first, group it together using a union and declare it as
an object, and then use a loop in the POV-Ray file to duplicate them the
required number of times.

Lance.

thezone - thezone.firewave.com.au
thehandle - www.thehandle.com

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"Lance Birch" <-> wrote in message news:41b7f0cf$1@news.povray.org...
> "Mike Thorn" <mik### [at] realitycheckmultimediacom> wrote in message
> news:41b7c987$1@news.povray.org...
> > Lance Birch wrote:
> > > Now it's time for rendering the obligatory arrayed-army of them ;)
> > >
> > > rendertime++
> >
> > The army is on its way, pending the learning of a couple features.
> >
> > And rendertime? You wouldn't believe how long it takes to parse a
> > 100x100 array of these guys...I actually ran out of memory trying to
> > create a 200x200 army. If the converter didn't do such wacky things with
> > the positioning (it uses matrices for everything and I hate those) it
> > would be easier to align the camera in such a way that minimal numbers
> > of units could be used with maximum exposure and effect.
>
> Heh, yes I figured as much :)
>
> Did you make the model in another program and are importing it into
POV-Ray?
> If so, don't do the duplication before converting it to a POV-Ray file...
> convert the model first, group it together using a union and declare it as
> an object, and then use a loop in the POV-Ray file to duplicate them the
> required number of times.

Addendum:  And if you're importing it as a POV-Ray mesh object, declaring
the mesh as an object and then doing the duplication in POV-Ray will use
hardly any additional memory (as the mesh is only stored in RAM once,
despite the fact that you may have it 40000 times in a scene).

Lance.

thezone - thezone.firewave.com.au
thehandle - www.thehandle.com

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Lance Birch wrote:
>>Did you make the model in another program and are importing it into POV-Ray?
> 
>>If so, don't do the duplication before converting it to a POV-Ray file...
>>convert the model first, group it together using a union and declare it as
>>an object, and then use a loop in the POV-Ray file to duplicate them the
>>required number of times.
> 
> Addendum:  And if you're importing it as a POV-Ray mesh object, declaring
> the mesh as an object and then doing the duplication in POV-Ray will use
> hardly any additional memory (as the mesh is only stored in RAM once,
> despite the fact that you may have it 40000 times in a scene).

Lance - yes, I'm converting it from MLCAD's native .ldr format (but 
unfortunately it's not a mesh). Already doing the loops.

Here's a progress shot of the army. I'd still like to play with the sky 
a bit - I had another heightfield at one point that was supposed to be 
mountains in the back (looked more like a volcano exploding right behind 
the troops), but a rotation mistake put it above the camera and it 
looked great as a sky plane. :)

I also need to add some explosions and blaster bolts (which may be the 
most difficult of all, though trace() will help a lot to make sure 
nobody gets shot in the back of the head).

~Mike

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