Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Eriban wrote:
> > Actually, what you see is the tail of a (table-sized) dragon
>
>   Ever considered creating a good dragon skin texture for it?

Not really. I am quite happy with this strange-looking, fantasy-like, green
texture with pink spots. It gives the small dragon a cute and innocent
appearance, which suits its character. It won't harm anyone. It's just an
inquisitive yet shy little creature. Also, it doesn't really have a need for
camouflage colors, as it can always hide on "the other side" as long as it does
not stray too far from a mirror when it's on "our side" of the world :-).

Nevertheless, if you have particular suggestions for improvement, or if you
simply don't think that it is clear from the image that this is the tail of a
small dragon, let me know.

Cheers,
Erwin

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This is a texture by Mike Williams That I like a lot. I keep it in my Moray 
files which explains the code format:

#declare DragonSkin =
   material  // DragonSkin
   {
      texture
      {
         pigment
         {
            crackle form <-1.0, 1.0, 0.0>
            color_map
            {
               [ 0.0     rgbft <0.0, 0.1, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0> ]
               [ 0.1     rgbft <0.3, 0.5, 0.1, 0.0, 0.0> ]
               [ 0.4     rgbft <0.3, 0.4, 0.2, 0.0, 0.0> ]
               [ 1.0     rgbft <0.5, 0.5, 0.1, 0.0, 0.0> ]
            }
            turbulence 0.2
            octaves 2
            ramp_wave
         }
         normal
         {
            crackle form <-1.0, 1.0, 0.0>
            turbulence 0.2
            octaves 2
            ramp_wave
         }
         finish
         {
            ambient 0.0
            phong 0.5
            phong_size 20.0
            specular 0.1
            roughness 0.15
            metallic 0.5
         }
         scale  0.3

         //  Texture by Mike Williams
         //  p.b.i. 04-07-2005

      }
   }

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"Eriban" <pov### [at] spamgourmetcom> wrote:
> Nevertheless, if you have particular suggestions for improvement, or if you
> simply don't think that it is clear from the image that this is the tail of a
> small dragon, let me know.

I don't know about Warp, but I for one indeed don't think it is clear from the
image.

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Eriban wrote:
> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>> Eriban wrote:
>>> Actually, what you see is the tail of a (table-sized) dragon
>>   Ever considered creating a good dragon skin texture for it?
> 
> Not really. I am quite happy with this strange-looking, fantasy-like, green
> texture with pink spots.

  No offense intended, but the current texture just doesn't look good,
IMO. It's one of those "beginner POV-Ray user textures". It doesn't look
realistic nor does it blend in the image (even if the image is supposed
to be a more abstract one).

  Even if you want a green texture with pink spots, you can still make
it look like it is the skin of a real critter, which really is there
among the other objects. It just needs a bit more work.

  Maybe a normal pattern and a proper finish could do marvels. Perhaps
work on the pigment itself as well a bit more (make it slightly less
uniformly colored).

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"Eriban" <pov### [at] spamgourmetcom> wrote:
> Given the time, I should probably improve the candle a bit.

Yes, that would be a welcome improvement.  The "old-school ray-tracing"
atmosphere is charming, but it doesn't work on the candle.  For the interim, a
lighter, yellower color and some specular highlights might do.

The "old school" gets irritating in the shadows, though.  The hourglass and the
candle holder look a bit too flat.

My .02 on the controversial topics:

The image action was clear to me *almost* from the beginning.  My first
impression was that the long, skinny thing (whatever it was) sticking out of
the mirror wasn't reflected properly.  Then I noticed the reflections of the
"thing" in the chrome sphere, and it became obvious what was going on.

I like the texture on the dragon.  In most situations it would be an eyesore,
but in this particular scene, it just fits.  The bright, contrasting colors
also help bring the viewer's attention to what's going on.

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"Thomas de Groot" <tDOTdegroot@interDOTnlANOTHERDOTnet> wrote:
> This is a texture by Mike Williams That I like a lot. I keep it in my Moray
> files which explains the code format:
>
> #declare DragonSkin =
>    [snip]

I just rendered this texture, and yes, it's a nice one indeed. It's much more a
dragon texture than the one I constructed for my scene. Nevertheless, I like
how mine has a more innocent and outlandish feel to it, due to its more
striking color combination. So I like to keep the current feel, but if at the
same time it's possible to make it appear a bit more dragon-like that would be
great. I don't really know yet what the resulting texture should exactly look
like though, which makes it a bit hard to construct :-). I'll think about it
some more.

Cheers,
Erwin

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"Eriban" <pov### [at] spamgourmetcom> schreef in bericht 
news:web.49d28669417afb2681475b100@news.povray.org...
>
> I just rendered this texture, and yes, it's a nice one indeed. It's much 
> more a
> dragon texture than the one I constructed for my scene. Nevertheless, I 
> like
> how mine has a more innocent and outlandish feel to it, due to its more
> striking color combination. So I like to keep the current feel, but if at 
> the
> same time it's possible to make it appear a bit more dragon-like that 
> would be
> great. I don't really know yet what the resulting texture should exactly 
> look
> like though, which makes it a bit hard to construct :-). I'll think about 
> it
> some more.
>

What you could try to do is combine the two textures, in particular to keep 
yours with the scale effect of the other one. That should not be too 
difficult imo.

Thomas

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"Eriban" <pov### [at] spamgourmetcom> wrote:
> I just rendered this texture, and yes, it's a nice one indeed. It's much more a
> dragon texture than the one I constructed for my scene. Nevertheless, I like
> how mine has a more innocent and outlandish feel to it, due to its more
> striking color combination. So I like to keep the current feel, but if at the
> same time it's possible to make it appear a bit more dragon-like that would be
> great. I don't really know yet what the resulting texture should exactly look
> like though, which makes it a bit hard to construct :-). I'll think about it
> some more.

Maybe keep the colors and just add some scaly structure?

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"Thomas de Groot" <tDOTdegroot@interDOTnlANOTHERDOTnet> wrote:
>
> What you could try to do is combine the two textures, in particular to keep
> yours with the scale effect of the other one. That should not be too
> difficult imo.

No, that should not be too difficult indeed. However, I don't think it would
look too good, or at least, that it won't look that biologically plausible.
Scales to me suggest that they have grown independently, which would make a
continuous pattern across the scales seem unnatural. I am not a biologist
though. However, the quick googling I have done so far for images of reptiles
and turtles with scales with a camouflage pattern seems to confirm this. Scales
can be patterned, but the pattern does not extend across the scales. This is I
think a bit more difficult to model as a texture, but probably also won't look
as nice. Still, I'd like the resulting texture to be somewhat biologically
plausible...

Cheers,
Erwin

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"Eriban" <pov### [at] spamgourmetcom> wrote:
> No, that should not be too difficult indeed. However, I don't think it would
> look too good, or at least, that it won't look that biologically plausible.
> Scales to me suggest that they have grown independently, which would make a
> continuous pattern across the scales seem unnatural.

Maybe there's a way to get the colors confined to the same structures that make
up the cells?

Hum... what one need would be a "crackle warp", that takes a crackle pattern to
warp a normal 3d co-ordinate to the corresponding "crackle cell's" center
point, and pick the color from there - resulting in the whole cell being
colored the same. So one could use the same crackle pattern both for normals
and to warp the current pigment. There, your scales.

To achieve this, you could conjure up a function to take a few samples of the
crackle "potential" to estimate the gradient vector, use that to estimate the
location of the cell's center, and pull the color value from the original
pigment at that point.

It would be a bit cumbersome because POV doesn't allow vector functions, so
you'd have to call the function separately on each dimension, but somehow it
should be possible.

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