Hi,

I might as well post something too. Just a sketch. Or a WIP, though I 
might not finish it. I'm trying to get inspired over here. The 
clay/stone guy was modeled in ShapeShop and detailed in Blender. The 
background is just a basic height_field. (you can tell, can't you) I 
spent one or two hours tweaking the render settings because things 
weren't going right. Is it just me, or do the new beta versions of POV 
make gamma-weird pngs? I had the hardest time getting this thing 
composited because the image files didn't match, color-wise. They looked 
fine in IrfanView, but rendered funky when I brought them back into in 
POV. I'm pretty sure I resolved all these issues before, but maybe it's 
time to re-resolve them :/

Sam

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stbenge <THI### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> I might as well post something too. Just a sketch. Or a WIP, though I
> might not finish it.

Superb. As always, your sketch/wip looks like well-honed reality! I don't know
where you where going with this but it looks like it's in a pretty
nicely-finished place already. Consider my gob well and truly smacked.

:)

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"stbenge" <THI### [at] hotmailcom> schreef in bericht 
news:492e46c0@news.povray.org...
> Hi,
>
> I might as well post something too. Just a sketch. Or a WIP, though I
> might not finish it. I'm trying to get inspired over here. The
> clay/stone guy was modeled in ShapeShop and detailed in Blender. The
> background is just a basic height_field. (you can tell, can't you) I
> spent one or two hours tweaking the render settings because things
> weren't going right. Is it just me, or do the new beta versions of POV
> make gamma-weird pngs? I had the hardest time getting this thing
> composited because the image files didn't match, color-wise. They looked
> fine in IrfanView, but rendered funky when I brought them back into in
> POV. I'm pretty sure I resolved all these issues before, but maybe it's
> time to re-resolve them :/
>

In fact, just a little item missing in the foreground, which the figure 
seems to be looking at. And maybe a bit more detail in the surface of the 
ground.

Your height_field is superb. Can tell? maybe, but those typical height_field 
thingies are used here very effectively to texture the outcrop.

And I agree with Bill. Superb indeed.

Thomas

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Bill Pragnell escreveu:
> stbenge <THI### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> I might as well post something too. Just a sketch. Or a WIP, though I
>> might not finish it.
> 
> Superb. As always, your sketch/wip looks like well-honed reality!

Indeed!  It's like da Vinci sketches! XD

I hope Sam don't ever show us his Monalisa!

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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> stbenge <THI### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> I might as well post something too. Just a sketch. Or a WIP, though I
>> might not finish it.
> 
> Superb. As always, your sketch/wip looks like well-honed reality! I don't know
> where you where going with this but it looks like it's in a pretty
> nicely-finished place already. Consider my gob well and truly smacked.
> 
> :)

Thank you for the comments. I guess I consider it unfinished because I 
had intended to complicate the ground with rocks or something. Plus, 
there's this horizontal line at the bottom of the rock hill where it 
meets the ground. I should have driven the height_field through the 
plane somewhat instead of making it a perfect fit, because it didn't 
turn out well with focal blur :(

Sam

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nemesis wrote:
> Bill Pragnell escreveu:
>> stbenge <THI### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>>> I might as well post something too. Just a sketch. Or a WIP, though I
>>> might not finish it.
>>
>> Superb. As always, your sketch/wip looks like well-honed reality!
> 
> Indeed!  It's like da Vinci sketches! XD

No, he was good at anatomy ;)

> I hope Sam don't ever show us his Monalisa!

Hopefully I haven't made one yet :)

Sam

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Thomas de Groot wrote:
> In fact, just a little item missing in the foreground, which the figure 
> seems to be looking at. And maybe a bit more detail in the surface of the 
> ground.

Yeah, that ground needs more work. Maybe I can get away with adding a 
few pebbles and an object of interest. (my gf suggested a flower) I 
might not have to re-render the whole thing, as I used compositing 
techniques to speed up the focal blur+radiosity rendering.

> Your height_field is superb. Can tell? maybe, but those typical height_field 
> thingies are used here very effectively to texture the outcrop.

It might help that I used the fastProx2 macro to darken the pits and 
cracks...

> And I agree with Bill. Superb indeed.

Thanks!

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention in my original post that I had to use HDR 
images instead of PNGs for the compositing. There was no other way!

Sam

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stbenge <THI### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Thomas de Groot wrote:
> > In fact, just a little item missing in the foreground, which the figure
> > seems to be looking at. And maybe a bit more detail in the surface of the
> > ground.
>
> Yeah, that ground needs more work. Maybe I can get away with adding a
> few pebbles and an object of interest. (my gf suggested a flower) I
> might not have to re-render the whole thing, as I used compositing
> techniques to speed up the focal blur+radiosity rendering.
>
> > Your height_field is superb. Can tell? maybe, but those typical height_field
> > thingies are used here very effectively to texture the outcrop.
>
> It might help that I used the fastProx2 macro to darken the pits and
> cracks...
>
> > And I agree with Bill. Superb indeed.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Oh yeah, I forgot to mention in my original post that I had to use HDR
> images instead of PNGs for the compositing. There was no other way!
>
> Sam

Excellent image.  I'd love to learn how you do all this--like:  how did you make
that heightfield?  Where can I find that fastProx2 macro?  What kind of
compositing are you doing?

Thanks,

Kirk

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Kirk Andrews wrote:
> stbenge <THI### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> It might help that I used the fastProx2 macro to darken the pits and
>> cracks...
> 
> Excellent image.  I'd love to learn how you do all this--like:  how did you make
> that heightfield?

Thanks Kirk. The height_field is really simple. It's just a pigment 
function composed of two granite patterns stretched along the x & y 
axes, using a pigment_map.

> Where can I find that fastProx2 macro?

I should warn you that it won't work with meshes and other objects you 
can't make inside() tests with. Height_fields are okay. It's part of my 
fastprox.inc file which also contains some SSS macros (these will work 
with any object, and may be useful for obtaining directional proximity 
patterns).

http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.scene-files/thread/%3C489f4610%40news.povray.org%3E/

> What kind of
> compositing are you doing?

I use Rune's illusion.inc file which lets you place an image into a 
scene based on the camera view. I do this with the beta version of POV, 
because it supports the .hdr format. I will explain my method in more 
detail later; I'm in a hurry!

Sam

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stbenge wrote:
> Kirk Andrews wrote:
>> What kind of
>> compositing are you doing?
> 
> I use Rune's illusion.inc file which lets you place an image into a 
> scene based on the camera view. I do this with the beta version of POV, 
> because it supports the .hdr format. I will explain my method in more 
> detail later; I'm in a hurry!

Kirk, here's the link leading to Rune's illusion.inc file:

http://runevision.com/3d/include/

This is one of the most versatile include files I've ever used. I have 
modified the code to work with HDR images, but I may need to contact 
Rune for permission to post it.

The basic idea for compositing images in POV is to pre-render parts of 
the scene and paste them back onto the objects for another render pass. 
For instance, in this scene of the clay/stone guy I rendered the 
height_field without anything in front of it first. I simply added 
no_shadow to the stone character. Then I projected the HF render back 
onto the HF, and rendered the character along with it. At this point I 
had two renders, one of just the HF rocks, and another with the rocks 
and character. I applied the HF render to the HF, and the 
character+rocks render to the character. With both images applied their 
respective objects, I then rendered the scene with high-sample focal 
blur, which took a ridiculously *short* amount of time.

It's better to use HDR images for all this, which is why you may want 
the modified illusion.inc code. It's also important to render the 
backdrop first, and render the front objects in steps, so that you do 
not end up with any strange outlines. You can get away with doing 
partial renders. If you use this technique for reflecting or refracting 
objects, be sure you are able to cope with possible inaccuracies. Also, 
using this method for focal blur+grass or similar objects may be 
exceedingly difficult. That is, unless you don't mind the horrible 
artifacts.

I hope this helped. I *should* make a tutorial illustrating this method, 
though I need to contact Rune before I do so.

Sam

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