POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.binaries.images : Elements of Geology 3 Server Time
11 Oct 2026 03:04:55 EDT (-0400)
  Elements of Geology 3 (Message 1 to 27 of 27)  
From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 2 Jun 2013 08:20:10
Message: <51ab387a@news.povray.org>
This one is about Deep Time, i.e. the ages needed for sedimentation - 
uplift - erosion.

The Victorian gentleman, obviously is Charles Lyell.

Thomas


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From: s day
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 2 Jun 2013 19:50:00
Message: <web.51abda107efef09c1027a5320@news.povray.org>
Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> This one is about Deep Time, i.e. the ages needed for sedimentation -
> uplift - erosion.
>
> The Victorian gentleman, obviously is Charles Lyell.
>
> Thomas

Hi Thomas,

Nice composition on this one, for me the grass in the foreground would be better
if real grass (I am guessing it is just a texture currently?)

Also, I think the grass in the distance is too bright/green.

I assume the fog is media? If not I would be interested to see your settings as
I never have much luck at getting a good turbulent ground fog using the fog
statement.

Sean


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 3 Jun 2013 02:58:14
Message: <51ac3e86$1@news.povray.org>
On 3-6-2013 1:49, s.day wrote:
> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> Nice composition on this one, for me the grass in the foreground would be better
> if real grass (I am guessing it is just a texture currently?)

You are absolutely right. This image is not the final version, and the 
foreground will also show some trees.

>
> Also, I think the grass in the distance is too bright/green.

Yes, I believe so too.

>
> I assume the fog is media? If not I would be interested to see your settings as
> I never have much luck at getting a good turbulent ground fog using the fog
> statement.

This is indeed a media. Neither could I indeed get a good enough 
turbulent ground fog. It always looks too splotchy. Media does a much 
better job.

Thomas


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From: Paolo Gibellini
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 3 Jun 2013 03:58:13
Message: <51ac4c95$1@news.povray.org>
>Thomas de Groot  on date 02/06/2013 14.19 wrote:
> This one is about Deep Time, i.e. the ages needed for sedimentation -
> uplift - erosion.
>
> The Victorian gentleman, obviously is Charles Lyell.
>
> Thomas
A very nice scene.
Could be interesting trying a render in sepia tones?
;-)
Paolo


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 3 Jun 2013 07:14:15
Message: <51ac7a87@news.povray.org>
And a new version.

Thomas


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 3 Jun 2013 07:22:43
Message: <51ac7c83@news.povray.org>
On 3-6-2013 9:58, Paolo Gibellini wrote:
> A very nice scene.
> Could be interesting trying a render in sepia tones?

Yes, certainly. As a post-processing product here... ;-)

As a render, I would add other things, like scratches, stains, faded 
areas... I shall look into this.

Thomas


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From: Paolo Gibellini
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 3 Jun 2013 09:55:05
Message: <51aca039$1@news.povray.org>
>Thomas de Groot  on date 03/06/2013 13.22 wrote:
> As a render, I would add other things, like scratches, stains, faded
> areas... I shall look into this.
>
> Thomas
>
>
Hey, stop post here old daguerreotypes!
;-)
Paolo


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 3 Jun 2013 10:06:04
Message: <51aca2cc$1@news.povray.org>
On 3-6-2013 15:55, Paolo Gibellini wrote:
> Hey, stop post here old daguerreotypes!
> ;-)

<grin> Still, that would be a nice idea... I think I shall follow up 
that hint...

Thomas


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From: Doctor John
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 3 Jun 2013 13:57:27
Message: <51acd907$1@news.povray.org>
On 03/06/13 12:14, Thomas de Groot wrote:
> And a new version.
> 
> Thomas
> 
...and the original photograph ;-D

John

-- 
The level of my sarcasm depends upon the level of your stupidity


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From: Doctor John
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 3 Jun 2013 14:00:33
Message: <51acd9c1@news.povray.org>
On 03/06/13 18:58, Doctor John wrote:
> On 03/06/13 12:14, Thomas de Groot wrote:
>> And a new version.
>>
>> Thomas
>>
> ....and the original photograph ;-D
> 
> John
> 
Oops! Forgot the attachment. Mea culpa

John

-- 
The level of my sarcasm depends upon the level of your stupidity


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From: Samuel Benge
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 3 Jun 2013 15:25:00
Message: <web.51acec6e7efef09c826ce7c10@news.povray.org>
Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> And a new version.
>
> Thomas

It's looking good, Thomas. The foreground is nicely detailed. Are you using or
planning to use backside illumination for the grass/small plants? The distant
cliffsides could use some surface normals, perhaps aligned with the strata.
Other than that, everything's shaping up nicely :)

So how many days are really left until we can no longer upload our entries? The
TC-RTC site seems to give different deadlines. If it's really only 13 days, I'm
screwed :S

Since springtime has come I've been hiking the hills. I just discovered that our
area produces opalescent quartz, some of it flawless (but very small). So I've
been searching for a good source, but the geology of our area has spread the
bedrock around quite a bit before actually pushing the stuff up to the surface.
The logging trails also confuse the matter.

Other than that, I've been distracted by the new version of Blender, and have
been learning as much of it as I can. Which, of course, means I haven't taken
the time to work on my challenge entries! So I really hope we have more than 13
days left :)

Sam


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From: Stephen
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 3 Jun 2013 16:13:33
Message: <51acf8ed$1@news.povray.org>
On 03/06/2013 8:20 PM, Samuel Benge wrote:
> So I really hope we have more than 13 days left:)

Worry not, Sam. The site has not been modified yet so we are running two 
back to back Challenges as one. You have 15 days plus two months left.
That is 75 days until the deadline.
It also means that people who have uploaded images for this "official" 
Challenge will need to upload them again. o_O

-- 
Regards
     Stephen


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From: Samuel Benge
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 3 Jun 2013 17:00:00
Message: <web.51ad02b57efef09c1c0872620@news.povray.org>
Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
> On 03/06/2013 8:20 PM, Samuel Benge wrote:
> > So I really hope we have more than 13 days left:)
>
> Worry not, Sam. The site has not been modified yet so we are running two
> back to back Challenges as one. You have 15 days plus two months left.
> That is 75 days until the deadline.

Ah, thank goodness :)

> It also means that people who have uploaded images for this "official"
> Challenge will need to upload them again. o_O

In that case, I'm definitely glad I haven't uploaded anything yet.

I haven't been able to pull up the TINA CHeP forums in two days, or post
anything for several. (I'm not intentionally ignoring my fellow 'cheppers!)

Sam


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 4 Jun 2013 03:20:53
Message: <51ad9555$1@news.povray.org>
On 3-6-2013 20:01, Doctor John wrote:
>> ....and the original photograph ;-D
>>

That is very credible indeed. You found me out ;-)

Thomas


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 4 Jun 2013 03:33:40
Message: <51ad9854$1@news.povray.org>
On 3-6-2013 21:20, Samuel Benge wrote:
> It's looking good, Thomas. The foreground is nicely detailed. Are you using or
> planning to use backside illumination for the grass/small plants? The distant
> cliffsides could use some surface normals, perhaps aligned with the strata.
> Other than that, everything's shaping up nicely :)

Thanks Sam. Backside illumination is something I have to look into 
indeed. Good suggestion. The cliff normals is also something on the todo 
list; there is a general normal there but some detailed alignment is 
certainly in order.

> Since springtime has come I've been hiking the hills. I just discovered that our
> area produces opalescent quartz, some of it flawless (but very small). So I've
> been searching for a good source, but the geology of our area has spread the
> bedrock around quite a bit before actually pushing the stuff up to the surface.
> The logging trails also confuse the matter.

Interesting. Sources may be difficult to find as the geology in your 
area is rather complex. Stream beds may not be a bad place to look I 
guess, not like gold placers of course, but in areas were some pebble 
size sorting has been active.

>
> Other than that, I've been distracted by the new version of Blender, and have
> been learning as much of it as I can. Which, of course, means I haven't taken
> the time to work on my challenge entries! So I really hope we have more than 13
> days left :)

Still on my todo...

Thomas


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 4 Jun 2013 03:34:43
Message: <51ad9893$1@news.povray.org>
On 3-6-2013 22:13, Stephen wrote:
> It also means that people who have uploaded images for this "official"
> Challenge will need to upload them again. o_O
>
I was afraid that would be necessary.

Thomas


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 4 Jun 2013 04:12:01
Message: <51ada151$1@news.povray.org>
On 3-6-2013 22:55, Samuel Benge wrote:
> I haven't been able to pull up the TINA CHeP forums in two days, or post
> anything for several. (I'm not intentionally ignoring my fellow 'cheppers!)

I don't know what is happening, but I have been unable to get at the 
TC-RTC forums for quite some time now, and the main site of the forum is 
also unresponsive, so I am unable to investigate the matter. From some 
error messages I have got, I wonder if they have not a serious hacker 
and/or spam problem.

Thomas


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From: Samuel Benge
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 4 Jun 2013 14:10:01
Message: <web.51ae2ced7efef09c826ce7c10@news.povray.org>
Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> On 3-6-2013 21:20, Samuel Benge wrote:
> > Since springtime has come I've been hiking the hills. I just discovered that our
> > area produces opalescent quartz, some of it flawless (but very small). So I've
> > been searching for a good source, but the geology of our area has spread the
> > bedrock around quite a bit before actually pushing the stuff up to the surface.
> > The logging trails also confuse the matter.
>
> Interesting. Sources may be difficult to find as the geology in your
> area is rather complex. Stream beds may not be a bad place to look I
> guess, not like gold placers of course, but in areas were some pebble
> size sorting has been active.

Fortunately there is a creek below the area in question; unfortunately the creek
receives poor sunlight in the afternoons, and is possessed with killer
mosquitoes. Which of course won't be stopping me >:) I need to take a screen box
and gold pan down there and go collecting. Even though panning for quartz is
pretty much pointless, there might be other minerals of higher mass which can be
separated in that manner. The presence of granite pegmatite, gneiss, and mica
schist gives me hope :)

Sam


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From: s day
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 4 Jun 2013 19:45:01
Message: <web.51ae7b2e7efef09c1027a5320@news.povray.org>
Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> And a new version.
>
> Thomas

This is looking really good now, I especially like the addition of the trees in
the foreground, what did you use to create them?

Sean


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 5 Jun 2013 03:11:21
Message: <51aee499@news.povray.org>
On 5-6-2013 1:41, s.day wrote:
>
> This is looking really good now, I especially like the addition of the trees in
> the foreground, what did you use to create them?
>

Yes, the trees are the key elements. These are Xfrog objects, for free: 
http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/plantslib/

Thomas


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 5 Jun 2013 03:13:05
Message: <51aee501$1@news.povray.org>
On 4-6-2013 20:07, Samuel Benge wrote:
> Fortunately there is a creek below the area in question; unfortunately the creek
> receives poor sunlight in the afternoons, and is possessed with killer
> mosquitoes. Which of course won't be stopping me >:)

I am sure you won't :-)

I need to take a screen box
> and gold pan down there and go collecting. Even though panning for quartz is
> pretty much pointless, there might be other minerals of higher mass which can be
> separated in that manner. The presence of granite pegmatite, gneiss, and mica
> schist gives me hope :)

Wish you luck.

Thomas


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From: Shay
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 5 Jun 2013 13:53:57
Message: <51af7b35$1@news.povray.org>
Nicely done. Techniques?

-Shay


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 7 Jun 2013 03:57:33
Message: <51b1926d$1@news.povray.org>
On 5-6-2013 19:53, Shay wrote:
> Nicely done. Techniques?

Thanks. Some explanation is indeed in order.

Height_fields:
The landscape is a GeoControl tga export, rendered as a function 
height_field. To fill the gaps towards the horizon (and extend the 
landscape) the height_field is mirrored and copied to right, back and left.
The foreground rock is a tiny part of another height_field that lies 
hidden behind the camera.

Landscape textures:
A greyish gradient y pigment (limestone and shale) and a reddish 
gradient y pigment (sandstone) are combined in a slope/altitude texture, 
together with a couple of bluish green pigments to simulate vegetation 
on the flatter (and lower) parts of the landscape. Not visible on this 
version of the image (see coming up one) is a gradient y slope_map 
normal added to the rocks, in order to simulate some additional rock 
layering (as suggested by Sam). The foreground rock uses Sean Day's rock 
texture with a green one for the base vegetation.

Vegetation:
200,000 trees are planted  on the landscape using a macro that I adapted 
from one by Kirk Andrews. It makes use of a virtual object (a flat 
boxlike object in this instance, rotated with one edge towards the 
camera) over the landscape. Random points ( VRand_In_Obj() ) in this 
object are traced down towards the landscape and written to file after a 
couple of tests, for instance the steepness of the slope, but also an 
additional visibility test, using the Visibility Test macro by Gilles 
Tran. The written location point are subsequently read for planting the 
instances of one (1) tree (POV-Tree) which harbours a macro giving a 
slight foliage texture variation for each tree.
The foreground trees are free ones made with Xfrog. The grass patches 
(4000) are planted using the same technique as the landscape trees. 
Eight different patches are randomly used. The patches came with Poser 
7, iirc. As suggested by Sam, I added a background diffuse to the grass 
(not in this image) but as the light comes from behind this is not going 
to be too visible.

Haze and mist:
A general haze is obtained by the combination of two ground fogs, one 
for near distance, the other for the far distance.
The ground mist is obtained by a media with boxed density_map using a 
granite pattern.

Clouds:
Thanks to Zeger Knaepen's FastCloud macro.

Sky and Sun:
I used sunpos.inc for the Sun's position and CIE.inc for the Sun's 
light. The sky_sphere makes use of the Sun's position too adapt the 
horizon's color.

Victorian gentleman:
This is a simple Poser figure for which I made a frock coat and a top 
hat in Silo 2. Gave him a cane too. Posed in Poser 8.
In order to find rapidly a correct position on the foreground rock, I 
made use of Norbert Kern's Position Finder macro.

Birds:
Poser crows were randomly posed within a virtual object (VRand_In_Obj 
once more) and translated to the correct position over the landscape.


I think I got everything.

Thomas


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From: Lightbeam
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 7 Jun 2013 15:47:59
Message: <51B238EF.8090908@gmail.com>
The backgroud is really nice but the front need some improvements (grass 
is dizzy...)
Good work tough :-)

Lightbeam


Le 02/06/2013 14:19, Thomas de Groot a écrit :
> This one is about Deep Time, i.e. the ages needed for sedimentation -
> uplift - erosion.
>
> The Victorian gentleman, obviously is Charles Lyell.
>
> Thomas


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From: Shay
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 7 Jun 2013 18:02:42
Message: <51b25882$1@news.povray.org>
"Thomas de Groot" <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote in message 
news:51b1926d$1@news.povray.org...
> On 5-6-2013 19:53, Shay wrote:
>> Nicely done. Techniques?
>
> Thanks. Some explanation is indeed in order.
>

Whoa. You weren't kidding when you said you've picked up a few things along 
the way.

The picture looks good. I know you prefer to be left to your own creative 
devices, but I'll offer that this might benefit from some more color.

 -Shay


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 8 Jun 2013 03:18:11
Message: <51b2dab3$1@news.povray.org>
On 8-6-2013 0:02, Shay wrote:
> Whoa. You weren't kidding when you said you've picked up a few things
> along the way.

<grin> Most things just gather dust in a remote corner of the HD. I have 
an ambivalent feeling about this. On the one hand, they are tools, 
nicely developed by others, more often than not in ways I am unable to 
do but which fit well in work I undertake. In that sense they enhance my 
creativity and help to achieve my goals without hampering the process. 
On the other hand, I feel much indebted to all the people who, over the 
years, came up with smart ideas and were willing to share them. My work 
is as much the result of their contributions as to my own doings, 
sometimes maybe more so. Well, that is of course all right. When you 
paint, you also use the canvas, the paint, and the brushes made by 
others ;-) At least, I try as much as possible to give credit to 
everybody who contributed one way or another to the process.

>
> The picture looks good. I know you prefer to be left to your own
> creative devices, but I'll offer that this might benefit from some more
> color.

I always accept hints ;-) What I do with them is another story.

I think you are right and I have had that same feeling for a couple of 
days now. I believe this mostly has to do with the vegetation in the 
valley which is a too uniform green soup. A bit boring indeed. I made 
rocks peek through a bit more but that is clearly not enough. What is 
needed is a wider range of greens in the trees and in the understory. 
Spectacular would be an autumn scene, but that is not my intention here, 
so I shall investigate more in the direction of pale yellow green and 
darker shades.

As far as the rocks are concerned, I think they should remain as they 
are, subdued shades of grey and browns.

Thomas


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Elements of Geology 3
Date: 8 Jun 2013 03:21:28
Message: <51b2db78@news.povray.org>
On 7-6-2013 21:47, Lightbeam wrote:
> The backgroud is really nice but the front need some improvements (grass
> is dizzy...)
> Good work tough :-)
>
Hey thanks, and good to see you here again. You commented on the very 
first version; later in the thread, I posted a better image...

Thomas


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