Following Thomas' comments about the stairs, plus my own dissatisfactions, I
have made some minor improvements: stairs are smaller, they now have lips over
the risers, and they have been properly diagonalized with the flooring extending
onto them top and bottom. This means that (in principle) staircases may now be
joined diagonally, extending indefinitely.

I also tidied up the railing post spacing to remove big gaps and irregularities.

Next up: planters.

Bill

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Attachments:
Download 'autobuild_improve1.jpg' (178 KB)

Preview of image 'autobuild_improve1.jpg'

This is so awesome; I'm glad you're perfecting it. It's an instant POV-Ray
classic.

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"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Following Thomas' comments about the stairs, plus my own dissatisfactions, I
> have made some minor improvements: stairs are smaller, they now have lips over
> the risers, and they have been properly diagonalized with the flooring extending
> onto them top and bottom. This means that (in principle) staircases may now be
> joined diagonally, extending indefinitely.
>
> I also tidied up the railing post spacing to remove big gaps and irregularities.

Nice construction and light setting Bill !

But I suspect that stairs would not be so comfortable to use.

Have you seen this page ?
https://www.finehomebuilding.com/project-guides/framing/2-rules-comfortable-stairs

--
Tor Olav
http://subcube.com
https://github.com/t-o-k

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"Tor Olav Kristensen" <tor### [at] TOBEREMOVEDgmailcom> wrote:
> But I suspect that stairs would not be so comfortable to use.
>
> Have you seen this page ?
> https://www.finehomebuilding.com/project-guides/framing/2-rules-comfortable-stairs

Haha! Very interesting! Of course, I agree that my stairs would be a real slog
to use in reality. I suppose I could flatten the cells slightly so they're not
cubical, then the stairs could be a more comfortable ratio and still tessellate
the way I want... but there's something nice about having cubic cells for this
project, so I think I'll leave them slightly oppressive and daunting for now :)

Bill

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"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> "Tor Olav Kristensen" <tor### [at] TOBEREMOVEDgmailcom> wrote:
> > But I suspect that stairs would not be so comfortable to use.
> >
> > Have you seen this page ?
> > https://www.finehomebuilding.com/project-guides/framing/2-rules-comfortable-stairs
>
> Haha! Very interesting! Of course, I agree that my stairs would be a real slog
> to use in reality. I suppose I could flatten the cells slightly so they're not
> cubical, then the stairs could be a more comfortable ratio and still tessellate
> the way I want... but there's something nice about having cubic cells for this
> project, so I think I'll leave them slightly oppressive and daunting for now :)
>
> Bill

I've designed (many) and built 2 complete staircases, and still remember a
carpenter friend insisting that they had to be done this ONE WAY.  My first
stairway came out amazing (wish I had photos) and the second one did a 180 on a
landing due to space constraints - done on the cheap before the whole house got
sucked into that Poltergeist vortex....

Great work and excellent improvements.  They are right - this will be an instant
classic.   Have you tried making one big plane or other geometries?

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"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Following Thomas' comments about the stairs, plus my own dissatisfactions, I
> have made some minor improvements: stairs are smaller, they now have lips over
> the risers, and they have been properly diagonalized with the flooring extending
> onto them top and bottom. This means that (in principle) staircases may now be
> joined diagonally, extending indefinitely.
>
> I also tidied up the railing post spacing to remove big gaps and irregularities.
>
> Next up: planters.
>
> Bill

Eyecandy!
I would be interested in your radiosity settings and render times, maybe even in
some kind of tutorial? Because the geometry looks challenging to that regard.

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"Mr" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Eyecandy!
> I would be interested in your radiosity settings and render times, maybe even in
> some kind of tutorial? Because the geometry looks challenging to that regard.

I use UberPOV almost exclusively these days, which has an unbiased radiosity
algorithm. This is a more brute-force approach to global illumination, but I
find it produces much better results at lower counts than regular radiosity - no
patchy artifacts, and no need for fine-tuning. The tradeoff is noisiness in
unlit areas, which can be much reduced by cranking up the count for final
renders. I've never been able to completely beat the dreaded radiosity artifacts
for regular radiosity except under the most ideal conditions.

UberPOV was originally a blue-sky testbed for new features, but is somewhat
stalled at present. This means it's stuck on v3.7.0, and I miss out on the newer
features in v3.8+. However, I'm told there are plans to incorporate this
radiosity algorithm in base POV-Ray eventually...

This image rendered in about 20-30 minutes on a 2012 dual-core laptop (I don't
have the exact time to hand!)

Bill

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"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> "Mr" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> > Eyecandy!
> > I would be interested in your radiosity settings and render times, maybe even in
> > some kind of tutorial? Because the geometry looks challenging to that regard.
>
> I use UberPOV almost exclusively these days, which has an unbiased radiosity
> algorithm. This is a more brute-force approach to global illumination, but I
> find it produces much better results at lower counts than regular radiosity - no
> patchy artifacts, and no need for fine-tuning. The tradeoff is noisiness in
> unlit areas, which can be much reduced by cranking up the count for final
> renders. I've never been able to completely beat the dreaded radiosity artifacts
> for regular radiosity except under the most ideal conditions.
>
> UberPOV was originally a blue-sky testbed for new features, but is somewhat
> stalled at present. This means it's stuck on v3.7.0, and I miss out on the newer
> features in v3.8+. However, I'm told there are plans to incorporate this
> radiosity algorithm in base POV-Ray eventually...
>
> This image rendered in about 20-30 minutes on a 2012 dual-core laptop (I don't
> have the exact time to hand!)
>
> Bill

Thanks ! These are very convincing numbers... and indeed I for one wouldn't have
managed to have any patch-free result at that speed. I hope any expert would be
able to pick up that challenge and prove there is actually some alternative for
such solutions when using official POV master ?

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"Mr" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Thanks ! These are very convincing numbers... and indeed I for one wouldn't have
> managed to have any patch-free result at that speed.

Forgot to mention, the radiosity count value was 100.

It's worth pointing out that there's absolutely nothing fancy in this scene,
everything's just flat colours, and I've kept recursion_limit at 1, which means
only directly-lit or emissive areas contribute to the radiosity lighting.
There's also a bit of geometry optimisation - everything is either boxes or
meshes, which render very quickly, except for the CSG in the roofs, which I've
bounded manually.

A high-quality render with a high radiosity count, complex textures,
reflections/glass and media would obviously be somewhat slower!

Bill

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"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Following Thomas' comments about the stairs, plus my own dissatisfactions, I
> have made some minor improvements...

This is a fascinating project to watch as it develops; the results are really
astounding. I'm sorry that I did not comment earlier, I was wrapped up in my own
POV-Ray chores, ha; but I went back and read all of the discussions starting
with your original post of Nov 9.

It all looks impossibly complex-- and quite beautiful. Thanks for sharing the
various renders and for explaining the nuts-and-bolts of how it was done.

Looking forward to seeing more!

-----
In one of your earlier threads/posts, you mentioned the possibility of using a
'radiosity-only' light_source (a feature (?) in UBER POV), for adding additional
fill light(?) to some of the darker recesses of your construction. Even if I'm
wrong about your meaning, it sounds like an interesting feature to contemplate:
A light_source that does not directly light-up an object surface, but does allow
the object to emit radiosity bounce-lighting (from that light) to other objects.

Doing some testing, I see that the same effect can be achieved in 'classic'
POV-Ray by using two identical objects for the 'main' object (one with
no_radiosity, one with no_image), perhaps in combination with an optional
light_group. The no_radiosity version is lit directly by the light; the no_image
version-- perhaps with a different finish{diffuse...} value-- casts the
light-produced rad onto other objects. (This may even be a way of 'tuning' the
rad lighting's cascading intensity from object to object. It would all be a
rather complicated construction, of course.)

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