Okay, I find myself with a few days of free time so I've finally decided to
enter the Lost City competition over at tc-rtc.co.uk. It's been a while since
I've competed but... here's my first hack at a hillside, modelled in Wings, and
some trace() fun with palm trees (okay, really just one tree, also modelled in
Wings). Next I'm going to try using Bill's mesh deformation macros to make the
terrain look more natural...

BTW, Thomas, I really like your entry (as usual :)

Cheers,
Rob

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Attachments:
Download 'wip01.jpg' (116 KB)

Preview of image 'wip01.jpg'

In this WIP I've mesh-deformed the base terrain and added some underbrush and a
foreground water surface (also quickly modelled in Wings).

So, the basic composition is there - next up, the background water, sky,
mountains, etc...

:)

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Attachments:
Download 'wip02.jpg' (166 KB)

Preview of image 'wip02.jpg'

"Robert McGregor" <rob### [at] mcgregorfineartcom> wrote:
> In this WIP I've mesh-deformed the base terrain and added some underbrush and a
> foreground water surface (also quickly modelled in Wings).
>
> So, the basic composition is there - next up, the background water, sky,
> mountains, etc...
>
> :)



The water is kind of lifeless at this point.  I hope you use some media and
other tricks to make it more interesting.  I was experimenting with wings3D and
water a while ago.  I gave up mostly because of the large sizes of meshes that
resulted, and moved primarily toward heightfields and isosurfaces.

Of course, with wings, one can make a wave roll as it breaks, but animating it
would be... tricky.

Anyway, attached is a picture of a heighfield based water test I did fairly
recently.  Below is the code I used for the water.

// CODE:

#declare matMyWater =
material{
texture{

    pigment{ color rgbt <1,1,1,0.90> }

    finish{
        specular  1.0000
        roughness 0.0001
        reflection{ 0, 0.99 fresnel }
        conserve_energy
    }
  }

interior{
    ior 1.333
  #if( use_dispersion )
    dispersion 1.01
    dispersion_samples 11
  #end

#local mSamples = 15;
#local mVariance = 1/255;
#local mThickness = 2.5;
#local mAbsorptionColor = <1.00,0.00,0.25>;  // absorb more red and some blue
#local mAbsorptionGray  = <1.00,1.00,1.00> * 0.25;
#local mAbsorbV = vnormalize(mAbsorptionColor + mAbsorptionGray);
    media
    {
        intervals 1
        samples mSamples
        confidence 1 - mVariance
        variance mVariance
        absorption    color rgb mAbsorbV * mThickness // absorbing media, block
light of specified color
        scattering
        {
            1, color rgb <0.50,0.50,1.00> * mThickness / 25
            extinction 1.0     // for balancing amount of absorption [1.0]
        }
        method 3               // adaptive sampling
        aa_threshold 0.1     // accuracy threshold for method 3 [0.1]
        aa_level 4           // maximum recursion depth for method 3 [4]
        density{ color rgb <1,1,1> }
    }
  }
}

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Attachments:
Download 'water_media_test.jpg' (153 KB)

Preview of image 'water_media_test.jpg'

Reactor wrote:
> Anyway, attached is a picture of a heighfield based water test I did fairly
> recently.  Below is the code I used for the water.

Sweet.  My experience, tho, is that water seen in a glacier like this is 
blue rather than green. About the same saturation, but since it's picking up 
the blue from the ice, the water looks very blue. Plus, it tends to undercut 
the banks much more than you've shown.

Ignore all this if the banks are white because you're not done instead of 
them being white because they're ice. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Reactor wrote:
> > Anyway, attached is a picture of a heighfield based water test I did fairly
> > recently.  Below is the code I used for the water.
>
> Sweet.  My experience, tho, is that water seen in a glacier like this is
> blue rather than green. About the same saturation, but since it's picking up
> the blue from the ice, the water looks very blue. Plus, it tends to undercut
> the banks much more than you've shown.
>
> Ignore all this if the banks are white because you're not done instead of
> them being white because they're ice. :-)
>
> --
>    Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
>    There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

I settled on just a plain white mainly because I wanted to see the effect of the
water and photons.  There wasn't an actual scene so much as there was a test (or
series of tests) to try and find a decent way of getting water to be the right
color across different depths.

I made it on the heels of another scene, where I wanted the water to be that
nice green color close at the shore (presumably in part because of the yellow
sand underneath), and have a darker blue green with some variations due to
depth and underwater objects.

I still haven't gotten it quite right, but I have found that it is sometimes
better to turn extinction 0 in the scattering block and control things via
absorption.

Realistic beach scenes are tricky (or so I assume, as I've never actually
managed a realistic one myself).

-Reactor

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> The water is kind of lifeless at this point.  I hope you use some media and
> other tricks to make it more interesting.

Oh sure, that last WIP was just using opaque colors as a placeholder.

Currently I'm working on detailing the water area; I like the media idea, I'll
try it out. I just finished making this image for use as height_field seaweed
floating in the water offshore.

-Rob

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Attachments:
Download 'seaweed_hf.jpg' (48 KB)

Preview of image 'seaweed_hf.jpg'

Here's the seaweed height_field scattered about randomly a few hundred times
across the (no_image) water surface. This should look pretty good when
submerged and refracted :)

-Rob

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Attachments:
Download 'wip05.jpg' (172 KB)

Preview of image 'wip05.jpg'

"Robert McGregor" <rob### [at] mcgregorfineartcom> schreef in bericht 
news:web.49da8810f7bb8ed94726e92b0@news.povray.org...
>
> BTW, Thomas, I really like your entry (as usual :)
>

Thanks!! Good luck. I am looking forward to your image!

Thomas

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Excellent idea.

Thomas

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"Robert McGregor" <rob### [at] mcgregorfineartcom> wrote:
> Here's the seaweed height_field scattered about randomly a few hundred times
> across the (no_image) water surface. This should look pretty good when
> submerged and refracted :)

Here's a quick test of the lagoon with my height_field seaweed floating in the
water. I tried using media in the water, but with all the water normals, sky
reflections, and floating stuff it's not really visible anyway, so I've decided
against it for this image...

Cheers,
Rob

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Attachments:
Download 'wip06.jpg' (269 KB)

Preview of image 'wip06.jpg'