"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:

>
> I do wish the arm struts could 'blend into' the body in a smoother way,
> though. (Each strut is a bicubic mesh, but the body is just a sphere
> primitive.) Or maybe I could re-build the struts AND body in sPatch, so that
> they are all one big mesh.

Well, that didn't work. sPatch is good for some things--but trying to add my
pre-made strut object to one of the app's (built-in) sphere shapes proved way
too difficult. Better to use a more sophisticated app like Sculptris or Z-Brush
for that, to rebuild the entire model. Or even Wings3D.

Post a reply to this message

"Trevor G Quayle" <Tin### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:

>
> And they appear to be naked too.  You can just tell by the way they are avoiding
> each other's gaze...

Yep, naked as the day they were born. :-P  I was wondering if anyone would
notice. I'm thinking of giving them uniforms of some sort (just a simple
pigment, probably; maybe with what look like seat belts across their chests.)

Post a reply to this message

Le 04/05/2013 01:04, Kenneth nous fit lire :
> "Trevor G Quayle" <Tin### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> 
>>
>> And they appear to be naked too.  You can just tell by the way they are avoiding
>> each other's gaze...
> 
> Yep, naked as the day they were born. :-P  I was wondering if anyone would
> notice. I'm thinking of giving them uniforms of some sort (just a simple
> pigment, probably; maybe with what look like seat belts across their chests.)
> 
> 
> 
Glasnost of police!
If you are not a delinquent, you have nothing to fear.
Police staff is not delinquent per definition, so glasnost should apply
fully.

What do you mean you want to dress in basement of your glass house ?

Post a reply to this message

Le 04/05/2013 00:34, Kenneth nous fit lire :
> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>> Better and better indeed.
>>
>> Something which troubles me: why are those dials *behind* the pilots? I
>> would expect them in front of them.
> 
> Hmm, good point. My 'idea' is that the pilots are supposed to be almost
> completely surrounded by dials and gauges and stuff. Honestly, though, I came up
> with that conception *after* I added those dials-- just to mentally justify the
> addition :-O  Practically speaking, the back wall of the cockpit is the only
> location where they can be visible, and it needed some kind of detail there.
> 

It make sense, as for the old airplane's cockpit, only if there is a
third guy on the back, maybe turned sideway.

Post a reply to this message

Le_Forgeron <jgr### [at] freefr> wrote:

>
> It make sense, as for the old airplane's cockpit, only if there is a
> third guy on the back, maybe turned sideway.

Yes, like a flight engineer. Of course, this goofy police car is probably
completely computerized and 'fly-by-wire'-- so gauges and dials would be
redundant. But they *look* important. ;-)

BTW, the photo I used *is* from an old WWII airplane cockpit. In fact, I've used
it before, for the interior of my B-29 bomber model (posted a couple of years
ago.)

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 04 May 2013 00:52:24 +0200, Kenneth <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:


> BTW (and this is a bit off-topic): For your jazz-musician scene and its
> neon-signs (the sphere_sweeps), did you experience any of the 'clipping'
> problems that are being discussed? I didn't see any obvious problems in  
> your
> renders.
>

I really don't remember having any clipping problems. It was hand-coded.

-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

Post a reply to this message

"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> The spline requirement for the sphere_sweep is indeed a tricky thing to come up
> with (re: my particular windshield outline.) What I imagine is that the spline
> might not end up exactly following the correct curve. But that's just
> theorizing; I should give it a chance, to see what happens.

You could always use a linear spline with lots of points, this would follow your
spline points exactly and can be made to look pretty smooth e.g.

union
{
sphere_sweep {
  linear_spline                 // linear curve
  //cubic_spline                // alternative spline curves
  //b_spline
  #declare np=80;
  #declare p=0;
#declare r=0;
  np+1,                            // number of specified sphere positions
#while ( p < np+1 )
  vrotate(<0,-10, 0>, <0, 0, r>), 1
  #declare r=r+360/np;
  #declare p=p+1;
  #end
 // tolerance 0.001             // optional

  pigment { rgb <1, 0, 0> }
  finish { specular 0.5 roughness 0.01 }
}
  bounded_by { box { <-11, -11, -1> <11, 11, 1> } }
 }


produces the torus shape below. I recommend adding a bounded_by as performance
is pretty poor otherwise and probably as part of the spline bounding issue it
seems that you have to put the sphere_sweep inside a union and bound the union
otherwise it makes no difference to performance.

Sean

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'sphere_sweep.bmp.dat' (1407 KB)

"s.day" <s.d### [at] uelacuk> wrote:

>
> You could always use a linear spline with lots of points, this would
> follow your spline points exactly and can be made to look pretty
> smooth...
>

That idea didn't occur to me. (And I've never noticed *any* problems with the
linear spline.) I can see this working quite well (as your example image
demonstrates; thanks for that.) In fact, the 'linear' nature of the final
shape--if looked at on a tiny scale-- would not be too far removed from what I'm
doing now. That is, my 3000X3000 preliminary image render of the windshield
area, when seen close-up, has a 'pixel stairstep' appearance anyway. In essence,
linear--and it's being scanned that way too. EXCEPT that a sphere_sweep would be
*smooth*-- no 'micro bumpiness' like my current many-spheres technique.

This is an intriguing idea! The thing is, I've forgotten if a sphere_sweep
object is 'evaluated' by POV-Ray at parse time or during the rendering stage. If
the latter, that might slow things down during my animation (regardless of
#writing the sphere_sweep to a file beforehand.) And maybe the same situation
using blobs.

I'll have to try this to see.


> I recommend adding a bounded_by as performance
> is pretty poor otherwise and probably as part of the spline bounding issue it
> seems that you have to put the sphere_sweep inside a union and bound the union
> otherwise it makes no difference to performance.

Thanks for the good advice!

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 05 May 2013 18:48:17 +0200, Kenneth <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:

> This is an intriguing idea! The thing is, I've forgotten if a  
> sphere_sweep
> object is 'evaluated' by POV-Ray at parse time or during the rendering  
> stage. If
> the latter, that might slow things down during my animation (regardless  
> of
> #writing the sphere_sweep to a file beforehand.) And maybe the same  
> situation
> using blobs.
>
> I'll have to try this to see.
>
>

Apparently blobs render faster:
http://news.povray.org/povray.windows/thread/%3Cweb.47841f263bacf7e1748549bc0@news.povray.org%3E/?ttop=381969&toff=50

-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

Post a reply to this message

Have you seen the old blob-modeled work by H.E. Day? Similar to this. His
absorbing/emitting media code may still be online somewhere. If not, the
technique is well-documented.

 -Shay

Post a reply to this message