Jim Charter <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote:

> Very promising first post.  Technically accomplished.  For me the main
> stopping point is a relatively minor thing, the grass.  What you have
> just doesn't correspond to anything familiar to me.  The rest is  quite
> believable.

Thanks you very much!

The following link shows grass, which is pretty close to the type of grass
that I meant. I hope, it begins looking more familiar? ;-)
http://www.kieserite.com/effects/bilder/Weide-Gras-1.jpg

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frozen wrote:
> Jim Charter <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Very promising first post.  Technically accomplished.  For me the main
>>stopping point is a relatively minor thing, the grass.  What you have
>>just doesn't correspond to anything familiar to me.  The rest is  quite
>>believable.
> 
> 
> Thanks you very much!
> 
> The following link shows grass, which is pretty close to the type of grass
> that I meant. I hope, it begins looking more familiar? ;-)
> http://www.kieserite.com/effects/bilder/Weide-Gras-1.jpg
> 
okay  but that reference doesn't really give a sense of the scale which 
is the basic problem for me.  Thing is, I can well imagine that 
somewhere, somehow, there is some botanical form which corresponds to 
your grass.  But I have a difficult time placing it in a garden setting 
like that.  For instance the fat, spiky appearance sort of reminds me of 
a dense type of flower you find on hardwood forest floors called dogwood 
or trillium.  Or I can think of different grasses that are fat and spiky 
like that, especially in the US SE like Florida, but the scale would be 
smaller by at least 1/2.  At the scale you show I would expect the grass 
to be thinner and a little 'softer" or bent over.

I really don't want to get anal about it.  It is just the part of the 
picture that stops me from projecting into the illusion.  May not be a 
problem for others.  But one observation you might take away from the 
conversation is to recognize that while your picture has an admirable 
degree of complexity for a raytracing, there still are only a small set 
of elements that comprise it.  So the believability of each element 
counts for a lot

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Jim Charter <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote:
> But one observation you might take away from the
> conversation is to recognize that while your picture has an admirable
> degree of complexity for a raytracing, there still are only a small set
> of elements that comprise it.  So the believability of each element
> counts for a lot

I thought a bit about what you said and I think you are right. I will have
to play around with the grass. I will make it thinner.

I rendered a bigger picture with radiosity and AA. It took 1d14h34m22s!! The
grass is still unchanged. The shadow is brighter now and I think, it looks
much better. I'm looking forward to your comments!

Regards,

frozen

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Attachments:
Download 'chess.jpg' (115 KB)

Preview of image 'chess.jpg'

Very Nice Image.

As I see other people have mentioned the grass I thought I would too.  It
may be be correct but at first glance it puts the viewer off of the image.

I've had the same thing when I've presented images including reflection.  I
had a wooden table that reflected wallpaper, people around me said I was
nuts because tables dont do that.  I got so mad I ended up buffing a table
and moving it over to the wall to prove my point.  But in the end I realised
I may have been technically right but, the image didn't "look" right to the
observer.

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"frozen" <fro### [at] thefrozenno-ipcom> wrote in message 
news:web.414dcefe90d95b228d45c69f0@news.povray.org...
>
> I rendered a bigger picture with radiosity and AA. It took 1d14h34m22s!! 
> The
> grass is still unchanged. The shadow is brighter now and I think, it looks
> much better. I'm looking forward to your comments!
>

I like it better.  Even so, I think the radiosity count could be higher, and 
error_bound could go lower.  But that's one of those times when you have to 
begin to be realistic.  I've played around with scenes involving grass with 
a high radiosity count, and you quickly realize that it will never render in 
your life-time.  ;-)

I can't tell for sure, but did you put "ambient_light off" in your 
global_settings block?  Some of those stones in the shadowed area seem a 
little bright.  Also (I think I've made this mistake before), make sure that 
your global_settings block is before your #include's, or they will still end 
up with ambient light values, which you generally don't want in a radiosity 
scene.

It's looking good though!  Personally, I love outdoor scenes: grass, stones, 
sky...  :-D

-- 
Jeremy
www.beantoad.com

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frozen wrote:
> This is a small "preview" I rendered last night. The picture still requires
> some work.

Very nice! I'm wondering how you got that pattern of stones on the wall. 
It's not brick and it's not crackle, but it's actually a rather common 
pattern around the city I'm in (San Diego).

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> frozen wrote:
> > This is a small "preview" I rendered last night. The picture still requires
> > some work.
>
> Very nice! I'm wondering how you got that pattern of stones on the wall.
> It's not brick and it's not crackle, but it's actually a rather common
> pattern around the city I'm in (San Diego).

It's created from superellipsoids by the mur.inc file from Steven Pigeon.
You can get it from the following page:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html

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"Jeremy M. Praay" <sla### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> [...] I've played around with scenes involving grass with
> a high radiosity count, and you quickly realize that it will never render in
> your life-time.  ;-)

It renders for 1 to 2 days even just as it is right now... The wall is, what
renders slowest...

> I can't tell for sure, but did you put "ambient_light off" in your
> global_settings block?  Some of those stones in the shadowed area seem a
> little bright.  Also (I think I've made this mistake before), make sure that
> your global_settings block is before your #include's, or they will still end
> up with ambient light values, which you generally don't want in a radiosity
> scene.

Thank you for these ideas! Unfortunately I think, I will take the rendering
that now runs, as final, because it renders sooooo long and I don't like
playing around with parameters when I have to wait 2 days to check the
results..

> It's looking good though!  Personally, I love outdoor scenes: grass, stones,
> sky...  :-D

Thank you very much! I personally like outdoor scenes too, but I notice more
and more, that these aren't easy..

Regards,

frozen

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The newest version with thinner grass.. I am away for a few days but I will
read and write here from to time. When I'm back, I will use another tree on
the right side and add a few butterflys and have a look at this chess
figure, which seems to be inside the board with one half... Comments
welcome!

Regards,

frozen

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Attachments:
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Preview of image 'chess.jpg'

frozen wrote:
> The newest version with thinner grass.. I am away for a few days but I will
> read and write here from to time. When I'm back, I will use another tree on
> the right side and add a few butterflys and have a look at this chess
> figure, which seems to be inside the board with one half... Comments
> welcome!
> 
> Regards,
> 
> frozen
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
That grass looks very more believable to me.

vis-a-vis your superellipsoid slowness issue.

one possible solution might be found in the fact that

a) superellipsoids can be gotten with isosurfaces

here Mike Williams talks about it:
http://www.econym.demon.co.uk/isotut/builtin1.htm#super

and
b) isosurfaces can be redone as meshes courtesy of Kevin Looney

http://www.geocities.com/qsquared_1999/pubfiles/pubfiles.html
Mike Williams on that:
http://www.econym.demon.co.uk/isotut/approx.htm

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