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31 Jul 2024 04:20:24 EDT (-0400)
  Drifting over the traps (Message 1 to 8 of 8)  
From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Drifting over the traps
Date: 15 Jul 2010 10:26:54
Message: <4c3f1aae@news.povray.org>
A current wip I want to show, is concerned with yet another aspect of 
landscape generation, combining several height_field techniques, approached 
as functions, and tiled with John VanSickles' patchwork macro.

Rune's fast sky is used, and 50000 simple trees are planted using Kirk 
Andrews' excellent landscape macros.

Thomas


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From: Samuel Benge
Subject: Re: Drifting over the traps
Date: 15 Jul 2010 12:50:01
Message: <web.4c3f3c0ade3eceda2ae36eb40@news.povray.org>
"Thomas de Groot" <tDOTdegroot@interDOTnlANOTHERDOTnet> wrote:
> A current wip I want to show, is concerned with yet another aspect of
> landscape generation, combining several height_field techniques, approached
> as functions, and tiled with John VanSickles' patchwork macro.
>
> Rune's fast sky is used, and 50000 simple trees are planted using Kirk
> Andrews' excellent landscape macros.

Looks fun! I've never traveled the skies aboard any conveyance; a hot air
balloon would be one of the best. A nice, pleasant ride. No need to hurry :)

Are you using 3.7b? The aoi pattern might work well for the grass texture. It
could even be useful for distant pine trees, where spheres are used to depict
clumps of needles.


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Drifting over the traps
Date: 16 Jul 2010 03:08:44
Message: <4c40057c$1@news.povray.org>
"Samuel Benge" <stb### [at] hotmailcom> schreef in bericht 
news:web.4c3f3c0ade3eceda2ae36eb40@news.povray.org...
>
> Looks fun! I've never traveled the skies aboard any conveyance; a hot air
> balloon would be one of the best. A nice, pleasant ride. No need to hurry 
> :)

Indeed, yes. Never done it myself, except virtually in a couple of my images 
;-)

>
> Are you using 3.7b? The aoi pattern might work well for the grass texture. 
> It
> could even be useful for distant pine trees, where spheres are used to 
> depict
> clumps of needles.

Yes I use 3.7 exclusively now and rarily go back to other versions. 
Excellent idea for the grass indeed, and for the trees. I shall have a go at 
it.

Thomas


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From: Paolo Gibellini
Subject: Re: Drifting over the traps
Date: 16 Jul 2010 04:02:07
Message: <4c4011ff@news.povray.org>
>Thomas de Groot  on date 15/07/2010 16:26 wrote:
> A current wip I want to show, is concerned with yet another aspect of
> landscape generation, combining several height_field techniques, approached
> as functions, and tiled with John VanSickles' patchwork macro.
>
> Rune's fast sky is used, and 50000 simple trees are planted using Kirk
> Andrews' excellent landscape macros.
>
> Thomas
>
>
>
I like a lot the choice of colors for terrain and grass. It's very pleasant.
Paolo


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Drifting over the traps
Date: 16 Jul 2010 04:09:46
Message: <4c4013ca$1@news.povray.org>
"Paolo Gibellini" <p.g### [at] gmailcom> schreef in bericht 
news:4c4011ff@news.povray.org...
> I like a lot the choice of colors for terrain and grass. It's very 
> pleasant.

Thank you, Paolo. The textures are extremely basic presently, but chosen for 
major effect indeed.

Thomas


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From: Bill Pragnell
Subject: Re: Drifting over the traps
Date: 16 Jul 2010 05:50:01
Message: <web.4c402ab3de3eceda6dd25f0b0@news.povray.org>
Love it. I get a real sense of scale and space, although the realism lapses a
little in the foreground. Of course, this is just a wip. :)

(I think this is a universal problem with landscapes - you need enough detail
for a convincing foreground, but not so much that speed/memory is wasted in the
distance. Either meshes and clever texturing, or some sort of level-of-detail
system).


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From: John VanSickle
Subject: Re: Drifting over the traps
Date: 16 Jul 2010 09:05:06
Message: <4c405902$1@news.povray.org>
Bill Pragnell wrote:
> Love it. I get a real sense of scale and space, although the realism lapses a
> little in the foreground. Of course, this is just a wip. :)
> 
> (I think this is a universal problem with landscapes - you need enough detail
> for a convincing foreground, but not so much that speed/memory is wasted in the
> distance. Either meshes and clever texturing, or some sort of level-of-detail
> system).

If I recall correctly, I did that with my patchwork height field macro, 
although the version I posted wherever I posted it might have had that 
part removed.  The macro set the precision of each height field so that 
it was about as great as the span of pixels occupied by it.

Regards,
John


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From: Thomas de Groot
Subject: Re: Drifting over the traps
Date: 16 Jul 2010 10:36:30
Message: <4c406e6e$1@news.povray.org>
"John VanSickle" <evi### [at] hotmailcom> schreef in bericht 
news:4c405902$1@news.povray.org...
> Bill Pragnell wrote:
>> Love it. I get a real sense of scale and space, although the realism 
>> lapses a
>> little in the foreground. Of course, this is just a wip. :)
>>
>> (I think this is a universal problem with landscapes - you need enough 
>> detail
>> for a convincing foreground, but not so much that speed/memory is wasted 
>> in the
>> distance. Either meshes and clever texturing, or some sort of 
>> level-of-detail
>> system).
>
> If I recall correctly, I did that with my patchwork height field macro, 
> although the version I posted wherever I posted it might have had that 
> part removed.  The macro set the precision of each height field so that it 
> was about as great as the span of pixels occupied by it.
>

If I read this correctly, it does indeed. See your comments with the macro 
(povray.general, May 13, 2008):

[start  John's comments]
There are several macros here that do the work.  The upshot to all this
is that I divide the x-z plane into a set of squares of unit size, and
create a separate heightfield for each box.  Some of these squares are
subdivided into smaller squares when they are near the camera.  Squares
whose height_fields fall outside of the camera view are culled so that
they don't take up memory space; this will be an issue if you have
reflective surfaces that clearly show the off-camera portions of your
scene.  The macro HF_Chunk() creates a height field for one square in
the x-z plane, starting at a particular x-z location and going the
specified size in the positive x and z directions.  I use one as the
square size.  The precision of the height field is calculated based on
the number of pixels the height field will span in the image.  This
causes issues if the height field is near the viewpoint, so such height
fields are subdivided until every child is either off-camera (and
culled) or no longer causing the problems from being too close.
[end John's comments]

In the present image, the subdivision level is pretty low (CLevel=3). In a 
final version this can go up, although not too much as parsing time 
increases proportionally of course.

Thomas


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