Am 10/11/2017 um 17:29 schrieb Stephen:
> On 11/10/2017 15:05, Ive wrote:
>> "Who? Me?"
> 
> The tip of that tail is telling me something. :-)
> 
> A nice study.
> 
Vermeer's cat is indeed based on the look and behavior of our neighbors 
cat, visiting us daily. Our own cat is a completely different breed - in 
every aspect.

-Ive

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Am 10/12/2017 um 1:51 schrieb Alain:

> Very good job :)
> That's probably the BEST cat renders I've ever seen, anywhere.

Thanks a lot, Alain. While there are some pretty good pro-renders in the 
web, I was trying not to focus too much on the technical aspects but 
somehow capture the *spirit* of this particular cat - without crossing 
the borderline to pure cliché.

-Ive

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Am 10/11/2017 um 17:31 schrieb Paolo Gibellini:
> 
> One of the best cat I've ever seen rendered in POV-Ray.

;)
out of interest and as my memory might fade away, any links to any 
(best) cats rendered in POV-Ray - besides Gille's "Mouseless"?

-Ive

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On 12-10-2017 11:46, Ive wrote:
> "I'm done now ... sleepy ... purr"
> 

Reminds me of the many cats that shared my life over the years... :-)

-- 
Thomas

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On 12-10-2017 12:19, Ive wrote:
> Am 10/12/2017 um 9:06 schrieb Thomas de Groot:
>> On 11-10-2017 14:57, Ive wrote:
>>> "Oops!"
>>
>> LOL! Excellent project and brilliant cat!
>>
> Something had to happen, over at Vermeer's ;)
> 
> -Ive

It also explains why the cat does not appear on the paintings... ;-)

-- 
Thomas

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Ive <ive### [at] lilysoftorg> wrote:
> Vermeer's cat...

These are all --- AMAZING.
You really elevate ray-tracing to a fine craft.

Well done!

No doubt you are familiar with _Tim's Vermeer_:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS_HUWs9c8c

So the obvious self-referential thing to do would be re-render them as very fine
paintings.   :)

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Am 10/12/2017 um 16:06 schrieb Bald Eagle:
> These are all --- AMAZING.
> You really elevate ray-tracing to a fine craft.
> 
> Well done!

Thank you.
> 
> No doubt you are familiar with _Tim's Vermeer_:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS_HUWs9c8c
> 
No, I wasn't. Thanks for the link. Now I'm trying to view the whole 
movie somewhere.
But I'm familiar with the book by Philip Steadman that seems to have 
been Tim's inspiration - and - on a personal note - do not find 
convincing at all.

> So the obvious self-referential thing to do would be re-render them as very fine
> paintings.   :)
> 
let's see ;)

-Ive

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Ive <ive### [at] lilysoftorg> wrote:
> Vermeer's cat...

Your work is a masterpiece!

Regards,
Dave Blandston

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Very beautiful, very well done :-)


Ive <ive### [at] lilysoftorg> wrote:
> Vermeer's cat...

Post a reply to this message

Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> On 12-10-2017 11:46, Ive wrote:
> > "I'm done now ... sleepy ... purr"
> >
>
> Reminds me of the many cats that shared my life over the years... :-)
>
> --
> Thomas

There are two cats in my house, too. But I'm often annoyed with them. Especially
one is too clingy.

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On 13-10-2017 7:27, And wrote:
> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>> On 12-10-2017 11:46, Ive wrote:
>>> "I'm done now ... sleepy ... purr"
>>>
>>
>> Reminds me of the many cats that shared my life over the years... :-)
>>
>> --
>> Thomas
> 
> There are two cats in my house, too. But I'm often annoyed with them. Especially
> one is too clingy.
> 

They all have their own personality, no doubt. They are probably even 
more annoyed with us, stupid humans. ;-)

-- 
Thomas

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Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> On 13-10-2017 7:27, And wrote:
> > Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> >> On 12-10-2017 11:46, Ive wrote:
> >>> "I'm done now ... sleepy ... purr"
> >>>
> >>
> >> Reminds me of the many cats that shared my life over the years... :-)
> >>
> >> --
> >> Thomas
> >
> > There are two cats in my house, too. But I'm often annoyed with them. Especially
> > one is too clingy.
> >
>
> They all have their own personality, no doubt. They are probably even
> more annoyed with us, stupid humans. ;-)
>
> --
> Thomas

No, humans are clever than cats. I believe.

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Ive <ive### [at] lilysoftorg> wrote:
> Am 10/11/2017 um 15:32 schrieb clipka:
> >
> > How did you achieve the fluffy fur look?
> >
>
> By adding 1.500.000 hairs (each made of around 60 triangles), still not
> even close to the amount of hairs a real cat has.
> I wrote a little C++ program, using the OpenSceneGraph library
> http://www.openscenegraph.org/
> to do it.
>
> -Ive

damn!  that's impressive!

BTW, nice set of scenes and lovely renderings :)

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On 13-10-2017 11:24, And wrote:
> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>> On 13-10-2017 7:27, And wrote:
>>> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>>>> On 12-10-2017 11:46, Ive wrote:
>>>>> "I'm done now ... sleepy ... purr"
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Reminds me of the many cats that shared my life over the years... :-)
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Thomas
>>>
>>> There are two cats in my house, too. But I'm often annoyed with them. Especially
>>> one is too clingy.
>>>
>>
>> They all have their own personality, no doubt. They are probably even
>> more annoyed with us, stupid humans. ;-)
>>
>> --
>> Thomas
> 
> No, humans are clever than cats. I believe.
> 

That is not what cats think ;-)

-- 
Thomas

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Am 10/14/2017 um 8:36 schrieb Thomas de Groot:
> On 13-10-2017 11:24, And wrote:
>> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>>> On 13-10-2017 7:27, And wrote:
>>>> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>>>>> On 12-10-2017 11:46, Ive wrote:
>>>>>> "I'm done now ... sleepy ... purr"
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Reminds me of the many cats that shared my life over the years... :-)
>>>>>
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> Thomas
>>>>
>>>> There are two cats in my house, too. But I'm often annoyed with 
>>>> them. Especially
>>>> one is too clingy.
>>>>
>>>
>>> They all have their own personality, no doubt. They are probably even
>>> more annoyed with us, stupid humans. ;-)
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Thomas
>>
>> No, humans are clever than cats. I believe.
>>
> 
> That is not what cats think ;-)
> 
Considering the results of recent elections and votes they might be right.

-Ive

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Ive <ive### [at] lilysoftorg> wrote:
> Am 10/14/2017 um 8:36 schrieb Thomas de Groot:
> > On 13-10-2017 11:24, And wrote:
> >> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> >>> On 13-10-2017 7:27, And wrote:
> >>>> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> >>>>> On 12-10-2017 11:46, Ive wrote:
> >>>>>> "I'm done now ... sleepy ... purr"
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Reminds me of the many cats that shared my life over the years... :-)
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --
> >>>>> Thomas
> >>>>
> >>>> There are two cats in my house, too. But I'm often annoyed with
> >>>> them. Especially
> >>>> one is too clingy.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> They all have their own personality, no doubt. They are probably even
> >>> more annoyed with us, stupid humans. ;-)
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Thomas
> >>
> >> No, humans are clever than cats. I believe.
> >>
> >
> > That is not what cats think ;-)
> >
> Considering the results of recent elections and votes they might be right.
>
> -Ive


Ha.

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Alain <kua### [at] videotronca> wrote:

> Very good job :)
> That's probably the BEST cat renders I've ever seen, anywhere.

I think he photographed his neighbor's cat and pasted the photos into the scene
;-P

All of the cat's poses are SO wonderfully-done; the rigging is amazing. Well,
the entire scene is amazing and beautiful! And 1,500,000 cat hairs-- wow!

Post a reply to this message

Ive <ive### [at] lilysoftorg> wrote:
> Vermeer's cat...

Beautiful! Really beautiful! I am in awe!

That must have taken a good while to create. The posing is spot on. I am
presuming Blender? If so, how long did it take you to get to grips with? I keep
threatening myself with taking the plunge but have not yet got around to it.
(Daunting interface, different way of working, inherent inertia, etc, etc).

Also, what hardware did you use for the render, and how long did it take?

Cheers,

Simon.

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Am 10/11/2017 um 17:29 schrieb Stephen:
> 
> The tip of that tail is telling me something. :-)
> 

And BTW thank you for ruining my innocent view of this cat, now I'm 
seeing her doing nasty gestures all the time ;)

-Ive

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Am 10/14/2017 um 14:20 schrieb Kenneth:
> Alain <kua### [at] videotronca> wrote:
> 
>> Very good job :)
>> That's probably the BEST cat renders I've ever seen, anywhere.
> 
> I think he photographed his neighbor's cat and pasted the photos into the scene
> ;-P
> 
Sure. If it would only hold still in that particular pose until I find 
my camera...

> All of the cat's poses are SO wonderfully-done; the rigging is amazing. Well,
> the entire scene is amazing and beautiful! And 1,500,000 cat hairs-- wow!
> 
Thank you, Kenneth.

-Ive

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Am 10/13/2017 um 22:19 schrieb nemesis:
> 
> damn!  that's impressive!
> 
> BTW, nice set of scenes and lovely renderings :)
> 

Thank you.

-Ive

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Am 10/12/2017 um 21:18 schrieb Dave Blandston:
> 
> Your work is a masterpiece!
> 
Thanks, Dave.

-Ive

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Am 10/13/2017 um 7:13 schrieb BayashiPascal:
> Very beautiful, very well done :-)
> 

Thank you.

-Ive

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Am 10/14/2017 um 21:31 schrieb Simon J. Cambridge:
> 
> Beautiful! Really beautiful! I am in awe!
> 

Thank you, Simon.

> That must have taken a good while to create. The posing is spot on. I am
> presuming Blender? If so, how long did it take you to get to grips with? I keep
> threatening myself with taking the plunge but have not yet got around to it.
> (Daunting interface, different way of working, inherent inertia, etc, etc).
> 
I'm using Blender since about 10 years, but I'm still learning, and 
always will - somehow there are new features and possibilities faster 
added than I'm able to get grasp on the existing ones. So, as I've never 
used Blender for rigging and posing (but I'm certain it can be done 
there), I used DAZ-Studio as I'm already familiar with the way it works 
there.
But breaking the pitcher was done with Blender and is one of the new 
things I've learned. As it turns out, it is easy to do and I guess I 
will break a lot more things in the future ;)

> Also, what hardware did you use for the render, and how long did it take?
> 

I had the opportunity to build (and use for myself for a limited time) a 
machine meant for numeric simulations. It's heart is a 
Skylake-generation, 14nm, turbo-clocked Xeon, 20 cores/40 threads with 
192GB DDR4-2666MHz ram. It did run a AVX2 optimized compile of 
Christoph's UberPOV. Each render took between 35-45 hours.
For GI based renders, blurred reflections are a must-have-feature - and 
as *every* object in the scenes uses it, I expected even longer render 
times.
I did prepare a few POV-Ray scenes of mine before-head to be rendered on 
that machine - what else would an old-time POV-Ray user do when he has 
such a beast at his fingertips ;)

-Ive

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On 15/10/2017 14:31, Ive wrote:
> Am 10/11/2017 um 17:29 schrieb Stephen:
>>
>> The tip of that tail is telling me something. :-)
>>
> 
> And BTW thank you for ruining my innocent view of this cat, now I'm 
> seeing her doing nasty gestures all the time ;)
> 
> -Ive
> 

How strange. It just says to me that something has it attention.

Oops! Posted the comment on the wrong image. It should have been on #6.

Whatever must you think of me? ;-)


-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On 15/10/2017 14:42, Ive wrote:
> 
> I had the opportunity to build (and use for myself for a limited time) a 
> machine meant for numeric simulations. It's heart is a 
> Skylake-generation, 14nm, turbo-clocked Xeon, 20 cores/40 threads with 
> 192GB DDR4-2666MHz ram. It did run a AVX2 optimized compile of 
> Christoph's UberPOV. Each render took between 35-45 hours.
> For GI based renders, blurred reflections are a must-have-feature - and 
> as *every* object in the scenes uses it, I expected even longer render 
> times.
> I did prepare a few POV-Ray scenes of mine before-head to be rendered on 
> that machine - what else would an old-time POV-Ray user do when he has 
> such a beast at his fingertips ;)

<Green with envy> I suppose you didn't even try the standard benchmark?

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Am 10/15/2017 um 15:52 schrieb Stephen:
> 
> <Green with envy> 

No need anymore. It's already gone :(

>I suppose you didn't even try the standard benchmark?
> 
No, I didn't. In hindsight maybe I should have - but too late for that.


-Ive

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Am 14.10.2017 um 09:14 schrieb Ive:
> Am 10/14/2017 um 8:36 schrieb Thomas de Groot:
>> On 13-10-2017 11:24, And wrote:
>>> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>>>> On 13-10-2017 7:27, And wrote:
>>>>> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>>>>>> On 12-10-2017 11:46, Ive wrote:
>>>>>>> "I'm done now ... sleepy ... purr"
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Reminds me of the many cats that shared my life over the years... :-)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -- 
>>>>>> Thomas
>>>>>
>>>>> There are two cats in my house, too. But I'm often annoyed with
>>>>> them. Especially
>>>>> one is too clingy.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> They all have their own personality, no doubt. They are probably even
>>>> more annoyed with us, stupid humans. ;-)
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> Thomas
>>>
>>> No, humans are clever than cats. I believe.
>>>
>>
>> That is not what cats think ;-)
>>
> Considering the results of recent elections and votes they might be right.
> 
> -Ive

I think it was Ezra Pounce who wrote,

    When I carefully consider the curious capers of cats
    I am compelled to conclude
    That man is the superior animal.

    When I consider the curious capers of man
    I confess, my friend, I am puzzled

Although I might be mistaken on a word or two...

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Am 12.10.2017 um 11:46 schrieb Ive:
> "I'm done now ... sleepy ... purr"
> 

Just one gripe about your cat: In the relaxed pose, we shouldn't be able
to identify the individual digits of its paws (nor should we be able to
see its claws).

Post a reply to this message

Here is a view with a wide angle camera into Vermeer's atelier to show 
the setup used for all cat images.
The camera position is within the (hypothetical) doorframe, the (also 
hypothetical) third window is covered by a rug (as I am lazy - and the 
rug was not meant to be seen directly - I didn't bother to drape it with 
more care) to achieve the typical lighting as seen in Vermeer's paintings.
The painting on the left (totally hypothetical) is by Ambrosius 
Bosschaert, another Flemish artist of the Dutch Golden Age.

The sky (and only source of illumination) is one of the free Dutch skies 
from
https://www.dutch360hdr.com/shop/
and the buildings are just billboards created from Vermeer's painting 
"View Of Delft".

-Ive

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Attachments:
Download 'vermeer's room.jpg' (659 KB)

Preview of image 'vermeer's room.jpg'

Ive <ive### [at] lilysoftorg> wrote:
> Am 10/14/2017 um 21:31 schrieb Simon J. Cambridge:
> >
> > Beautiful! Really beautiful! I am in awe!
> >
>
> Thank you, Simon.
>
> > That must have taken a good while to create. The posing is spot on. I am
> > presuming Blender? If so, how long did it take you to get to grips with? I keep
> > threatening myself with taking the plunge but have not yet got around to it.
> > (Daunting interface, different way of working, inherent inertia, etc, etc).
> >
> I'm using Blender since about 10 years, but I'm still learning, and
> always will - somehow there are new features and possibilities faster
> added than I'm able to get grasp on the existing ones. So, as I've never
> used Blender for rigging and posing (but I'm certain it can be done
> there), I used DAZ-Studio as I'm already familiar with the way it works
> there.
> But breaking the pitcher was done with Blender and is one of the new
> things I've learned. As it turns out, it is easy to do and I guess I
> will break a lot more things in the future ;)
>
> > Also, what hardware did you use for the render, and how long did it take?
> >
>
> I had the opportunity to build (and use for myself for a limited time) a
> machine meant for numeric simulations. It's heart is a
> Skylake-generation, 14nm, turbo-clocked Xeon, 20 cores/40 threads with
> 192GB DDR4-2666MHz ram. It did run a AVX2 optimized compile of
> Christoph's UberPOV. Each render took between 35-45 hours.
> For GI based renders, blurred reflections are a must-have-feature - and
> as *every* object in the scenes uses it, I expected even longer render
> times.
> I did prepare a few POV-Ray scenes of mine before-head to be rendered on
> that machine - what else would an old-time POV-Ray user do when he has
> such a beast at his fingertips ;)
>
> -Ive

It's the rigging and the posing in Blender that keeps beckoning to me. At the
moment I do everything by hand (I have a lot of pre-prepared meshes). Can't get
out of the habit! I also keep promising myself a refurbished workstation with a
serious number of cores, but given your render times I am wondering how high
your settings are (radiosity, samples and the like). This may have been
mentioned previously, but are you using SSLT for the hairs?

Either way, no gripes from me. I love the images.

Cheers,

Simon

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As promised, here is a 16:10 wallpaper image.
In case you want a lossless compressed version, this is a direct link to 
a PNG file (ca. 3.5 MB):

http://www.lilysoft.org/Download/Vermeer's%20Cat%20-%20Wallpaper%201.png

If you want a 16:9 version, you have my permission to crop it as you see 
fit ;) - and I suggest you also use the PNG for this purpose.

-Ive

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'vermeer's cat - wallpaper 1.jpg' (658 KB)

Preview of image 'vermeer's cat - wallpaper 1.jpg'

As promised, here is a 16:10 wallpaper image.
In case you want a lossless compressed version, this is a direct link to 
a PNG file (ca. 3.5 MB):

http://www.lilysoft.org/Download/Vermeer's%20Cat%20-%20Wallpaper%202.png

-Ive

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'vermeer's cat - wallpaper 2.jpg' (655 KB)

Preview of image 'vermeer's cat - wallpaper 2.jpg'

Am 10/15/2017 um 18:06 schrieb clipka:
> Am 12.10.2017 um 11:46 schrieb Ive:
>> "I'm done now ... sleepy ... purr"
>>
> 
> Just one gripe about your cat: In the relaxed pose, we shouldn't be able
> to identify the individual digits of its paws (nor should we be able to
> see its claws).
> 

You are right. I'm also sure that with more patience the overall 
appearance of the fur could be greatly improved.
The fur-making is driven by grayscale maps to control the length, 
thickness, direction and curliness of the individual hairs. I used 
Photoshop to "paint" all the maps and could watch the result within an 
OpenGL preview window. But as this is a quite tedious task I lost my 
patience at some point, something I regret meanwhile, just one hour more...

-Ive

Post a reply to this message

Very cool.

This reminds me a lot of the movie "Tim's Vermeer" - wherein Tim Jenison 
recreates the room and then paints "The Music Lesson" using a technique 
that is a guess at how Vermeer got a photorealistic quality to his 
paintings.

Fascinating movie - definitely worth a watch, especially by folks who are 
into raytracing.

Jim

-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

Post a reply to this message

Ive <ive### [at] lilysoftorg> wrote:
> Vermeer's cat...

Wow, the whole series is very nicely done!  I salute you :)

--
Dan
roadkillpuppy.com

Post a reply to this message

Ive <ive### [at] lilysoftorg> wrote:
> "..."

:-D  Awesome

Post a reply to this message

I'm always looking to learn how to increase the quality of my images, and reduce
the amount of work it takes to create a scene (thereby freeing up more time to
fine-tune it).

Can you give us a bit of background on the creation of this scene?

How long did it take you to model it?
How many tools other than POV-Ray did you use?

What sorts of simplifying "tricks" did you use (if any), and what interesting
methods or algorithms did you employ (you already touched on the map for the
hairs in the cat's fur)

Any special comments on lighting?

The carpet is beautiful - how did you texture and drape it?


Thanks  :)

[Looking at your finished work is reward in itself, but of course, as POV-ers,
you know we're all dying to know more.]

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Ive wrote on 12/10/2017 12:54:
> Am 10/11/2017 um 17:31 schrieb Paolo Gibellini:
>>
>> One of the best cat I've ever seen rendered in POV-Ray.
> 
> ;)
> out of interest and as my memory might fade away, any links to any 
> (best) cats rendered in POV-Ray - besides Gille's "Mouseless"?
> 
> -Ive
> 


I remember the convincing procedural cat found in Cassidy.inc (Neil 
Alexander, 1998 - see http://www3.sympatico.ca/stoker/IGlvroom.html and 
http://objects.povworld.org/binaries/cat.inc) and the fun coolcat.inc 
in POV-RAy examples...

But, seriously, the fur of a cat is very difficult to render and most of 
the previous examples I've seen was flat (e.g. 
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C46fa10f0$1@news.povray.org%3E/

and 
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C553e9fd1%40news.povray.org%3E/),

except for Nathan o'Brian cat
(http://oz.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/1998-12-31/13kitty.jpg, used also 
here 
(http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3Cweb.4f4a511d868e2771978383930@news.povray.org%3E/).

Paolo

Post a reply to this message

Ive wrote on 16/10/2017 13:31:
> As promised, here is a 16:10 wallpaper image.
> In case you want a lossless compressed version, this is a direct link to 
> a PNG file (ca. 3.5 MB):
> 
> http://www.lilysoft.org/Download/Vermeer's%20Cat%20-%20Wallpaper%202.png
> 
> -Ive
> 
Lovely!
:D

Post a reply to this message

Am 10/18/2017 um 13:20 schrieb Paolo Gibellini:
> 
> I remember the convincing procedural cat found in Cassidy.inc (Neil 
> Alexander, 1998 - see http://www3.sympatico.ca/stoker/IGlvroom.html and 
> http://objects.povworld.org/binaries/cat.inc) and the fun coolcat.inc in 
> POV-RAy examples...
> 
> But, seriously, the fur of a cat is very difficult to render and most of 
> the previous examples I've seen was flat (e.g. 
>
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C46fa10f0$1@news.povray.org%3E/

> and 
>
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C553e9fd1%40news.povray.org%3E/),

> except for Nathan o'Brian cat
> (http://oz.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/1998-12-31/13kitty.jpg, used also 
> here 
>
(http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3Cweb.4f4a511d868e2771978383930@news.povray.org%3E/).

> 
> 
> Paolo
> 

Hey, great, I wasn't aware of any of these. Fascinating that Nathan 
O'Brian did experiment with fur-cats that long ago.

Thanks,

-Ive

Post a reply to this message

Am 10/17/2017 um 20:33 schrieb Bald Eagle:
> I'm always looking to learn how to increase the quality of my images, and reduce
> the amount of work it takes to create a scene (thereby freeing up more time to
> fine-tune it).
> 
> Can you give us a bit of background on the creation of this scene?
> 
Sure. But keep in mind that all I'm doing might very well not be the 
best, easiest or simplest way.


> How long did it take you to model it?
15 years to evolve ;)
But seriously this is hard to say - every few years I did go back to 
this scene and added, changed or improved on a few details.
The pitcher with the cap and handle is a good example. I do not remember 
how long it took to create the original csg/lathe object, but as I 
wanted to smash it, it had to be redone as a mesh. Modeling in Blender 
was about half a hour but finding out how to break it and automatically 
arrange the shards on the floor lasted a whole afternoon. There are 
various ways, but I used the tool "Object:Cell Fracture" that ships with 
blender but needs to be enabled within the user preferences window - 
it's fun!
Or the lion-head-chairs: for the cat shots I did improve the fabric a 
bit by using back-scattering (this was not available the last time I've 
done anything with the scene) and making the fabric slightly translucent.
As meanwhile, to me, this scene is no longer about recreating the 
original painting, more about doing silly things, I also changed my 
original lion heads (friendly looking with a closed mouth) - close to 
the ones in Vermeer's paintings - to some more wild looking animals with 
open mouth where even the teeth can be seen.
Just for the cat shots of course, in the future I'll use the friendly 
lions again ;)


> How many tools other than POV-Ray did you use?
In no particular order:

Lightroom - creating 16bps Adobe RGB texture maps from digital raw photos.
Photoshop - editing texture maps; creating bump, transparency and 
specularity  maps; also maps to drive the fur-mesh generation.
Wings3D - mesh modeling.
Blender - mesh modeling, breaking the pitcher.
Poser*  - cloth room for creating the draping of the table rug.
Daz Studio - rigging and posing of the cat.
PoseRay - mesh conversion.
MS Visual Studio - to write simple tools to help scene development. The 
fur-mesh could not have be done in SDL because it needs access to the 
cat-mesh uv-coordinates for any given point at the surface.

*I don't use Poser anymore and would meanwhile do this with Blender.

> 
> What sorts of simplifying "tricks" did you use (if any), 

Err, well, I tend to make things more complicated than needed ;)
E.g. the pitcher, the pearls and the grapes are all slightly transparent 
and use scattering media for a SSS effect.
I used this method before for some Chinese porcelain (before SSLT was 
even introduced to POV-Ray) but while this worked great for the pearls, 
for the grapes it should be just a little more intense and for the 
pitcher, well, I'm pretty sure I would have gotten away without using it 
there at all - and would have saved a few hours of render time for each 
image where it is seen up close.


> and what interesting
> methods or algorithms did you employ (you already touched on the map for the
> hairs in the cat's fur)
> 
While I was about to write "nothing special" there is one thing that is 
worth mentioning (and I've almost forgotten after 15 years).

Here is the very first incarnation:

http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C3d7e31fa%40news.povray.org%3E/

where I did not even try to recreate the painting but the old Cornell 
University CGI copy of the painting that was the cover art of a book 
that itself was considered 25 years ago the "bible of graphics 
programming", I still have it ;)

To recreate the painting "The Music Lesson" for a raytracer, the 
dimensions of the room are needed. Or, to be more precise, the 
proportions (the dimensions in actual units, let's say cm, are less 
important and can be established later by simply assuming the teacher 
has the size of e.g. 170 cm).
Assuming that Vermeer did strictly follow the (since the Renaissance era 
well established*) rules for perspective painting, I did a few 
orthographic construction drawings (from the right and the top to 
establish the view point, vanishing point, horizon line and such) and so 
could determine at what angle the mirror above the virginals hangs from 
the wall.
Within the mirror is also the edge visible where the rear wall meets the 
floor - so the distance from the front to the rear wall can be 
calculated. Now, the interesting thing is, assuming the window wall is 
symmetrical, this matches exactly with the size for the window wall *if* 
there is a third window and *if* all three windows have the same size 
and *if* the wall size between the center window and the left/right 
window is identical.
A lot of assumptions and ifs (and still no way to get the position for 
the wall opposite the windows besides - by having the proportions so far 
- assuming a room with nice overall proportions) - but I was quite 
fascinated by these results so far.
At this time I was not aware of the book "Vermeer's Camera" by Philip 
Steadman (maybe it wasn't even published), but later after having posted 
an early version here in this newsgroup someone (sorry, don't remember 
who it was) did mention it and I did immediately buy the book.
Philip Steadman did the same calculations I did and also did came to the 
same conclusions regarding the dimensions of the room**. My image 
"Vermeer's Room" (posted a few days ago) shows the result of my "reverse 
engineering" process based on the painting.

And at my homepage are a few of my older renderings:

http://www.lilysoft.org/CGI/Music%20Lesson/musiclesson.htm


*e.g. Albrecht Dürer (I'm quite familiar with his work as he lived in my 
former home town) did publish a few books on this topic - himself being 
mostly influenced by Italian painters.

**but I completely disagree with the arguments he makes for Vermeer's 
usage of a camera obscura. These are all just cherry-picking or - in 
other words - a good example for bad science.


> Any special comments on lighting?
> 
Just GI, i.e. radiosity in POV-Ray terms. As a result, no material in 
the scene uses specular or phong highlights but blurred reflections, 
even the carpet (see below) - together with the ultra high radiosity 
settings the main reason for the long render times.
And I do not post the radiosity settings on purpose, they are not 
helpful because even with a powerful workstation every render took up to 
45 hours and with a common high end i7 class machine it would take weeks.


> The carpet is beautiful - how did you texture and drape it?
> 
My wife has some interest in old carpets (not only Persian) and created 
over the years a huge collection of high resolution photographs.
As she (like me) shoots always in RAW format, these are perfect for 
being used as image maps. I searched her collection for a rug that comes 
close to the one seen in Vermeer's painting - regarding color tint and 
ornamentation. Parts of the coloring are selective changed later in 
Photoshop to get even closer.
Draping was done in the Poser cloth room, I think it was Poser 6 at the 
time, I don't have Poser installed anymore.
The rug is also reflective using *very* blurred reflections and I'm sure
anisotropic, blurred reflections would make it even better but this is 
one of the feature that I greatly miss when using POV-Ray as render engine.

> 
> Thanks  :)
>
You're welcome. And feel free to ask if you have any more questions. I 
always wanted to add some scenes or at least some furniture objects to 
my homepage for download, but - lazy as I am - never did it. Maybe some 
day...

-Ive

Post a reply to this message

Am 10/17/2017 um 4:48 schrieb Dan Byers:
> Ive <ive### [at] lilysoftorg> wrote:
>> Vermeer's cat...
> 
> Wow, the whole series is very nicely done!  I salute you :)
> 
Thank you.

What happened to the stupid bee jokes - I'm a big fan and really miss 
them ;)

-Ive

Post a reply to this message

Am 18.10.2017 um 13:20 schrieb Paolo Gibellini:

> I remember the convincing procedural cat found in Cassidy.inc (Neil
> Alexander, 1998 - see http://www3.sympatico.ca/stoker/IGlvroom.html and
> http://objects.povworld.org/binaries/cat.inc)

That's arguably impressive.

Post a reply to this message

On 18/10/2017 15:25, Ive wrote:
> 
> What happened to the stupid bee jokes - I'm a big fan and really miss 
> them ;)


Yeah, me too.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Ive <ive### [at] lilysoftorg> wrote:

> Sure. But keep in mind that all I'm doing might very well not be the
> best, easiest or simplest way.

No worries.  These things have a life of their own.  One needs to be practical.
"Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good"

> > How long did it take you to model it?
> 15 years to evolve ;)

Well, that explains a lot   :D

> But seriously this is hard to say - every few years I did go back to
> this scene and added, changed or improved on a few details.
> The pitcher with the cap and handle is a good example.
.....
> There are
> various ways, but I used the tool "Object:Cell Fracture" that ships with
> blender but needs to be enabled within the user preferences window -
> it's fun!

Yes, it sounds that way, and adds an element which is very hard to achieve any
other way.


> > How many tools other than POV-Ray did you use?
> In no particular order:
>
> Lightroom - creating 16bps Adobe RGB texture maps from digital raw photos.
> Photoshop - editing texture maps; creating bump, transparency and
> specularity  maps; also maps to drive the fur-mesh generation.
> Wings3D - mesh modeling.
> Blender - mesh modeling, breaking the pitcher.
> Poser*  - cloth room for creating the draping of the table rug.
> Daz Studio - rigging and posing of the cat.
> PoseRay - mesh conversion.
> MS Visual Studio - to write simple tools to help scene development. The
> fur-mesh could not have be done in SDL because it needs access to the
> cat-mesh uv-coordinates for any given point at the surface.

That's quite the suite of graphics tools.
I need more free time to play with some of those...

> > What sorts of simplifying "tricks" did you use (if any),
>
> Err, well, I tend to make things more complicated than needed ;)

Yes, if you've seen any of the things I get involved with, I fully understand.


> Here is the very first incarnation:
>
>
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C3d7e31fa%40news.povray.org%3E/

That's pretty cool to see the origins of this.  It's come a long way!
I'm glad you got to crank it through the Big Box and get a NICE render!

"I have simply used another Rembrandt for the moment."

Well, I suppose that's what anyone of us would have done in the same situation.
 When you misplace something like that, it's best to just pop another out of the
cupboard...
:D

> To recreate the painting "The Music Lesson" for a raytracer,
.....
> Philip Steadman did the same calculations I did and also did came to the
> same conclusions regarding the dimensions of the room**. My image
> "Vermeer's Room" (posted a few days ago) shows the result of my "reverse
> engineering" process based on the painting.

> The rug is also reflective using *very* blurred reflections

I would have never guessed THAT!  :O

 - lazy as I am -



^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Yeah, totally slothful.   <facepalm>

Thanks for giving some insight into the design and development of this scene.
Too often there are scenes that sort of seem to pop out of thin air, and we're
left to wonder: How the H would I ever do _that_!!!???

Thanks again for such a complete historical description!

Post a reply to this message

Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
> On 18/10/2017 15:25, Ive wrote:
> >
> > What happened to the stupid bee jokes - I'm a big fan and really miss
> > them ;)
>
>
> Yeah, me too.
>
> --
>
> Regards
>      Stephen

People actually remember them??  That's a shock... haven't plunged down that
varmint hole in a looooong time.  Probably will make a return visit, but other
things are holding my interest :)

That cat is just killing me...

--
Dan
roadkillpuppy.com

Post a reply to this message

On 20/10/2017 02:39, Dan Byers wrote:
> Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
>> On 18/10/2017 15:25, Ive wrote:
>>>
>>> What happened to the stupid bee jokes - I'm a big fan and really miss
>>> them ;)
>>
>>
>> Yeah, me too.
>>
>> --
>>
>> Regards
>>       Stephen
> 
> People actually remember them??  That's a shock... haven't plunged down that
> varmint hole in a looooong time.  Probably will make a return visit, but other
> things are holding my interest :)
> 
> That cat is just killing me...
> 

Set the bees on it. ;-)

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
> >
> > That cat is just killing me...
> >
>
> Set the bees on it. ;-)
>
> --
>
> Regards
>      Stephen

Ooh... not sure if that's a fair fight ;)

--
Dan
roadkillpuppy.com

Post a reply to this message

On 22/10/2017 19:16, Dan Byers wrote:
> Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
>>>
>>> That cat is just killing me...
>>>
>>
>> Set the bees on it. ;-)
>>
>> --
>>
>> Regards
>>       Stephen
> 
> Ooh... not sure if that's a fair fight ;)
> 
Of course not. I'm backing the bees. :-)



-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message