Just a question: Why is it called "The Blue Flower"? Is there some 
reference that I am missing?

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Techically stunning, especially the lush grass matted with debris, the 
accuracy of the tree species, even the sky.
Thematically I feel like the thought is there, the elements are orbiting 
around but haven't come together quite yet. Compositionally, the 
symmetry, with the ruin right in the center, perhaps calls for something 
more pared down and stark, or else the lushness wants for less symmetry? 
  The ruin, feels not quite right, something so destroyed, yet still 
maintaining crucial details of wrought iron and archway.
That it is not overgrown in such a lush setting, and the flanking dead 
trees are the tipoff to what you are aiming to say off course, but I 
just don't quite feel that it has jelled into a total statement.

The strange coincedence of events around the cross with raven, for 
instance, leaving the tree behind seem to float.

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Ive <"ive### [at] lilysoftorg"> wrote:
> I've never made a serious attempt on doing an outdoor scene so here is
> my first try.


It looks really good!  Others have already mentioned the stonework not having
individual pieces, but I do have one other nitpick.  Without really knowing
anything concrete about the size and type of building, it still seems odd that
the hills and trees are so close in front of or behind the remaining wall.  I
also think the fog should probably be scattering media, because it seems to
have a hazy sort of glow in the shadowed areas.

Anyway, you've done a very good job in my opinion.


-Reactor

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Ive nous illumina en ce 2009-04-24 05:28 -->
> I've never made a serious attempt on doing an outdoor scene so here is 
> my first try.
> 
> I'm no botanist but I did some research on what kind of trees could have 
> grown together in a mixed leaf forest on European hills during the 18th 
> century so we have here 'Sycamore Maple', 'European Beech', 'English 
> Oak', 'Red Oak' and 'Horse Chestnut'. Some of them where already in the 
> standard XFrog library and I did create the missing ones with XFrog - 
> which is in fact quite easy when you have some good reference photos.
> All the leaves where 'painted' in autumn colors within Photoshop.
> 
> There are also a few thousand dead leaves on the ground, not just 
> randomly distributed but with respect to the corresponding tree position 
> but sadly this is almost not visible due all the fog, shadows, ferns and 
> shrubs.
> 
> As almost every POVer I did create my own grass macro.
> As a side note: my first quite naive version of using single grass 
> blades and distributing them over the landscape didn't work out because 
> this did quickly require more than 2GB of memory. I guess because each 
> blade-mesh itself is instantiated but still requires its own 
> transformation to be be stored. So I made a macro for creating an 
> irregular grass patch and distributed those patches - and memory usage 
> dropped to 100MB for the same amount of blades.
> 
> The ruin is made of spline based isosurfaces and the gravestones are 
> also isosurfaces. Both made with the help of Christoph Hormann's 
> excellent IsoCSG includes.
> 
> I'm currently quite unhappy with the distribution of the shrubs and 
> bushes. I'll have to find some better 'rules' to pseudo-random 
> distribute them.
> And the overall look of the woods is too clean, what I have in mind is 
> an ancient forest - so there is still a lot of research and work to do.
> 
> anyway, comments and recommendations are very welcome, especially since 
> I spend almost my entire live within cities...
> 
> -Ive
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
Very good grass!
I agree with you about the place been to clean.

Let see... An old forest should have dead branches, and some boulders and 
smaller rocks. Some more bushes and undergrowth would also seem appropriate.
The two bare trees don't need to be dead trees, just trees that loose ther 
leaves faster. But they look to symetrical to the ruin. just displacing one a 
bit should do the job.
I'd also slightly reorient the camera somewhat to the left.
As ther is a ruin, there shold also be some broken stone blocks, and some almost 
intact but partialy buried.
Tree bark tend to get rougher near the base of the tree, but some trees tend to 
keep some smoothness for a very long time. Maples and oaks tend to have very 
rough bark, with vertical grooves that can get to be an inch deep and sometimes 
more.

Where is the blue flower?

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
You know you've been raytracing too long when you look at waterfalls, dust, 
rain, snow, etc, and think: "If only I had a fractalized, vector based 
particle-system modeler with collision detection!"

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"Reactor" <rea### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>   Without really knowing
> anything concrete about the size and type of building, it still seems odd that
> the hills and trees are so close in front of or behind the remaining wall.

That's actually quite common where I live.

One of my junior high classrooms used the bedrock of the abutting hill as one of
its walls!

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On Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:28:19 +0200, Ive <"ive### [at] lilysoftorg"> wrote:

>anyway, comments and recommendations are very welcome, especially since 
>I spend almost my entire live within cities...

Nice but you can't just say "As almost every POVer I did create my own grass
macro." and leave it like that ;)

The mist looks fine to me and not over done

Is the title "The Blue Flower" a symbolic reference to romanticism? If so it
fits.
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore".
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Jim Charter wrote:
> Techically stunning, especially the lush grass matted with debris, the 
> accuracy of the tree species, even the sky.
> Thematically I feel like the thought is there, the elements are orbiting 
> around but haven't come together quite yet.

Well put, thats exactly how I feel about it too.


> Compositionally, the 
> symmetry, with the ruin right in the center, perhaps calls for something 
> more pared down and stark, or else the lushness wants for less symmetry? 

Yes, I'm aware of that and I think my idea by using a more 'Classical' 
(meant as opposed to 'Romantic') layout was to add an ironic touch 
already to the composition. But I'm definitely not so sure anymore where 
and how far this ironic distance should go.


>  The ruin, feels not quite right, something so destroyed, yet still 
> maintaining crucial details of wrought iron and archway.
> That it is not overgrown in such a lush setting, and the flanking dead 
> trees are the tipoff to what you are aiming to say off course, but I 
> just don't quite feel that it has jelled into a total statement.

In fact the 'design' of the ruin is stolen from Caspar David Friedrich
who used the building within several paintings - and by sometimes 
'putting' the ruin in total different environments. Thats quite usual
for artists (not only painters) of the Romanticism as they where not 
interested Realism but in an idealized picture of nature and the middle
ages.


> The strange coincedence of events around the cross with raven, for 
> instance, leaving the tree behind seem to float.

Yes, the raven. Edgar Allen Poe - as I do read him - meant his well 
known novels and poems quite ironic or even as a parody to the 'German 
Gothic Art' that was quite en vogue during the 19th century in America.
Poe's other writings, letters and art criticism do make it quite clear 
that he was in fact a child of the 'Age of Enlightenment'.


Thanks a lot for your input Jim, it forced me to actually think again 
about my own intentions because I got quite sidetracked by purely 
technical aspects.

-Ive

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Mr. Art wrote:
> Just a question: Why is it called "The Blue Flower"? Is there some 
> reference that I am missing?

There is no blue flower in the picture but there is a reminiscence to
the "Blue Flower" seen as a symbolic reference to Romanticism - 
including lyric, music and painting.
Novalis, a German 18th century writer, used the "Blaue Blume" as
metaphor for search for the unreachable, desire and unfulfilled love.

-Ive

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Thomas de Groot wrote:
>  For a first try, this is really excellent. The grass in particular is one 
> of the best I have seen.
> 
Thank you, Thomas.


> Personally, I find the tree trunks too smooth and would like to see a bit of 
> rough bark. Also, the two dead trees, on both sides of the ruin, are a bit 
> overdone, imo. Only one dead tree should be much more natural looking in 
> this context. I would choose the right one, and replace the left one by a 
> major bush.
> 
> Like Jaime, I would like to see some stone structure in the wall.
>
Will work on those.


> The raven on the cross is very appropriate, although maybe a bit of a 

> 



some more thought as I'm still not so sure about the direction to go...

...see my reply to Jim for more.

-Ive

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Stephen wrote:
> Is the title "The Blue Flower" a symbolic reference to romanticism? If so it
> fits.
> Quoth the raven, "Nevermore".


Yes, and thank you Stephen, I was already thinking that nobody 
recognizes it - and would have made the title quite senseless.

-Ive

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