Slightly inspired by the message "Blobby characters", here is my attempt 
at text blobs. It is actually generated in POV by a macro that places 
blob components randomly inside an object, which uses the eval_pattern() 
function with the "object" pattern to find points inside the container 
object. Because of this, it can produce a blob from any object.
If there is any interest in it, I will upload it to one of the scene 
file groups. It does require MegaPOV, though.

-- 
Chris Huff
e-mail: chr### [at] yahoocom
Web page: http://chrishuff.dhs.org/

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"Chris Huff" <chr### [at] yahoocom> wrote :
>
> It is actually generated in POV by a macro that places
> blob components randomly inside an object, which uses the eval_pattern()
> function with the "object" pattern to find points inside the container
> object.
>

    This seems like it is close to generating tubular or rounded text. I
know that people have wanted this in the past, would this be a good way to
do it? A little more regular distribution of spherical blobs...

    I have seen some ways of doing it, but not one which would presumably
use -any- font.

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In article <38d5581e$1@news.povray.org>, "Bill DeWitt" 
<the### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:

>     This seems like it is close to generating tubular or rounded text. I
> know that people have wanted this in the past, would this be a good way to
> do it? A little more regular distribution of spherical blobs...

The distribution is regular, there are just not enough components to 
make a smooth shape. In this image, the box below the text and the 
"POV-Ray" text object had 2000 components each, I am currently rendering 
a version with 10000 components for the text. It is quite a bit 
smoother, but still looks like an uneven gel or a liquid defying the 
laws of the universe(I wonder how long a transparent version would 
take...with photons, of course).


>     I have seen some ways of doing it, but not one which would presumably
> use -any- font.

Any object, actually. That includes spheres and boxes as well as text 
objects with any font, although for most fonts the end result is 
similar, small details are lost due to the blobbing. Using smaller 
components and more of them helps avoid that problem at the cost of 
memory and speed(although rendering is still fairly fast and memory 
usage is smaller than high-resolution meshes would be).

I will post the scene file in povray.text.scene-files.

-- 
Chris Huff
e-mail: chr### [at] yahoocom
Web page: http://chrishuff.dhs.org/

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"Chris Huff" <chr### [at] yahoocom> wrote in message
news:chrishuff_99-5BB9AA.18101119032000@news.povray.org...
| In article <38d5581e$1@news.povray.org>, "Bill DeWitt"
| <the### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
|
| >     This seems like it is close to generating tubular or rounded text. I
| > know that people have wanted this in the past, would this be a good way to
| > do it? A little more regular distribution of spherical blobs...
|
| The distribution is regular, there are just not enough components to
| make a smooth shape. In this image, the box below the text and the
| "POV-Ray" text object had 2000 components each

This seems an awful lot of components.  I suppose it means the randomness causes
such lumpiness as to prevent a smoother surface.  What if a very thin font with
very little depth were used, shouldn't that help?  And then with large enough
sphere components it could be better for that.  Although this clumped appearance
is very good, I guess it's the efficiency people would seek more often.

Bob

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In article <38d58747@news.povray.org>, "Bob Hughes" 
<per### [at] aolcom?subject=PoV-News:> wrote:

> This seems an awful lot of components.  I suppose it means the 
> randomness causes such lumpiness as to prevent a smoother surface.  
> What if a very thin font with very little depth were used, shouldn't 
> that help? 

A thinner font does help smooth it out, and I was able to get a little 
improvement by tweaking the blob parameters.
I might try a grid arrangement, but I don't think that will do more than 
make the lumpiness more regular and predictable.


> And then with large enough sphere components it could be better for 
> that. 

While larger components will smooth it out, they don't get the details 
of the font. Make them too large, and all you get is a slightly 
text-like blob of...whatever.


> Although this clumped appearance is very good, I guess it's the 
> efficiency people would seek more often.

This may be more efficient than using an external program to generate 
the mesh for many uses, and it can do things like julia_fractals and 
complex CSG's as well as text objects.
I am attaching a version which uses a different font, some tweaked blob 
settings, and 6000 components.

-- 
Chris Huff
e-mail: chr### [at] yahoocom
Web page: http://chrishuff.dhs.org/

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Heck yeah, now THAT's rounded text without a doubt.  Wonderful job of it.

Bob

"Chris Huff" <chr### [at] yahoocom> wrote in message
news:chrishuff_99-1184C4.07203320032000@news.povray.org...
| The number of components is still high(6749 in this version), and
| because of the method used you can only set the x, y, and z resolution,
| not the final number of components, but the results are quite a bit
| smoother. The render speed is pretty good, too.
| I won't repost the whole file, but I will post the two macros(both an
| updated random placement version and the new grid placement version)
| with some quick documentation in .text.scene-files.
| I hope these are useful to someone...
|
| --
| Chris Huff
| e-mail: chr### [at] yahoocom
| Web page: http://chrishuff.dhs.org/
|
|

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