The granite macro has been overhauled once again. Please find (and play 
with) the latest beta version (1.4) and the first granite include file 
(DakotaRedGranite.inc) which is also the default if you do not use the 
file including parameter.

Put it through its paces!

-- 
Thomas

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Attachments:
Download 'granite_21_beta_1.4.mcr.txt' (20 KB) Download 'dakotaredgranite.inc.txt' (3 KB)

Op 28-5-2021 om 17:11 schreef Thomas de Groot:
> The granite macro has been overhauled once again. Please find (and play 
> with) the latest beta version (1.4) and the first granite include file 
> (DakotaRedGranite.inc) which is also the default if you do not use the 
> file including parameter.
> 
> Put it through its paces!
> 
I forgot to mention an important info:

To load an external granite file, you need to put the following two 
lines in your scene before calling the macro:

#declare Granite_file = "DakotaRedGranite.inc"
#include Granite_file

"Granite_file" is an imperative name for the macro to read/test. 
Otherwise, you can call any file you want ("MyOwnBackyardGranite.inc") 
provided that you use exactly the same array names as in the default 
("DakotaRedGranite.inc") and adapt the number of entries, where 
necessary, for each array.

-- 
Thomas

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OK. This is a /cleanup/ version of the granite macro, and associated 
DakotaRedGranite.inc file.

The following things need to be addressed (in no particular order):

- A comprehensive demo scene file
- A comprehensive documentation
- An investigation/implementation of Real World dimensions (should have 
started with that, but you know of it goes...)
- Additional xxxGranite.inc files to be fed to the macro

Concerning that last point, and with the knowledge that the granite 
/industry/ names /granite/ everything that is hard, grainy, pretty when 
polished, I have started to wonder if /all/ the granite codes provided 
originally by Daniel Mecklenburg (an employee of said industry) /are/ 
really granites. There is little doubt imp, about Canadian Pink and 
North American Pink; Southern Gray and Medium Gray also seem to be 
genuine, but I need more info. However, I start to seriously scratch my 
head with the /black/ granites: Impala and India Black; and what to 
think of St. Andre Green? I think those are not granites at all but 
something else, gabbros, gneisses, I don't know what. Again, I need more 
info. What I want to say by all this, is that those rocks potentially 
may need a different approach in comparison to the granites proper.

This is as far as I have presently got in my quest for the Granite 
Grail, today, Anno Domini 2021, on the 30th day of the month of May.

-- 
Thomas

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Download 'dakotaredgranite.inc.txt' (3 KB) Download 'granite_21_beta_1.5.mcr.txt' (21 KB)

Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> OK. This is a /cleanup/ version of the granite macro, and associated
> DakotaRedGranite.inc file.
>
> The following things need to be addressed (in no particular order):
>
> - A comprehensive demo scene file
> - A comprehensive documentation
> - An investigation/implementation of Real World dimensions (should have
> started with that, but you know of it goes...)
> - Additional xxxGranite.inc files to be fed to the macro

Excellent.

I got dragged into the distasteful task of fixing/replacing my old cell phone
(swapping out the motherboard has got me 99% of the way there) and haven't had a
chance to delve into this yet.

Having written all of this, you would be the most knowledgeable about what to
test / show off in a demo scene.

Depending on changes, documentation might not be comprehensive until it's all
real-world tested-broken-fixed in the wild.

My (essentially new) phone with the granite photos is the one that suddenly and
inexplicably died - I will see if I can still retrieve them.  Maybe the
dimension should be a parameter...

I will look, at fiddling with the inc file - as this is likely to drive the
creation of all of the previous items.



Thanks for all of your expertise and industrious coding in this!
I think it's pretty nice that we have some new patterns and materials that came
out of this - relatively quickly - and hopefully a lot of the methods extend
over to other materials.

I will get 2nd coffee and begin reading...

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Maybe I'm tired, doing it wrong - or there are errors.

In line 69 you have a capitalized inc file name, but you provide an
all-lowercase named file.

Then in line 70 you include a file - but if Granite_file isn't declared, it
throws an error - which I thought is what line 69 is for.

and _GRANITE_FILE_INC_ doesn't even exist until the file actually gets included,
so aren't you checking the wrong identifier?

Shouldn't it read something like:

#ifndef (Granite_file)
    #declare Granite_file = "dakotaredgranite.inc";
    #declare FileOK = file_exists (Granite_file);
    #if (FileOK)
        #include Granite_file
    #else error concat ("Material color_map file \"", Granite_file, "\" doesn't
exist.  Exiting."
    #end // end if
#end // end ifndef

?

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Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:

> - A comprehensive demo scene file

> - An investigation/implementation of Real World dimensions (should have
> started with that, but you know of it goes...)

> - Additional xxxGranite.inc files to be fed to the macro

So I was playing with a scene for editing the material's color_map, and in
addition to the inc file stuff, I noticed that you had removed all of the macro
parameters.

I think that works really nicely, so far.

On the one hand, I like the #undef stuff at the end, but with what I'm doing
with variations on the same theme, I noticed that that causes me to have to
redeclare any macro parameters before each call.  No big deal - I can work with
that.

But I'm thinking if it doesn't change anything, maybe have it work like

Granite_21 (optional parameters_persist)
(default is no)
and then #if (parameters_persist) would govern macro section 7

I have some things laid out with to-scale rulers, and with respect to the SSLT
I'm wondering what I should do to indicate the - depth - of the translucency
effect.  I'm not sure that I know of an equation / documentation / diagram for
calculating / estimating the effect given an rgb 1 light_source and material
thickness.

I'm going to try to figure out a way to get as much useful visual info into the
scene, but minimize the long render time effect of the SSLT.

Perhaps as a lead-in to the documentation, you could just briefly comment on the
layout and purpose of the macro parts - the masks and such?

Thanks,

- Bill

Attached is highlighting 2 color_map entries in green, and then replacing them
with black.  Just a little macro to make it easier to do from within the scene
file.

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Attachments:
Download 'graniteeditor.png' (223 KB)

Preview of image 'graniteeditor.png'

Op 30/05/2021 om 16:16 schreef Bald Eagle:
> Maybe I'm tired, doing it wrong - or there are errors.
> 
> In line 69 you have a capitalized inc file name, but you provide an
> all-lowercase named file.
> 
> Then in line 70 you include a file - but if Granite_file isn't declared, it
> throws an error - which I thought is what line 69 is for.
> 
> and _GRANITE_FILE_INC_ doesn't even exist until the file actually gets included,
> so aren't you checking the wrong identifier?
> 
> Shouldn't it read something like:
> 
> #ifndef (Granite_file)
>      #declare Granite_file = "dakotaredgranite.inc";
>      #declare FileOK = file_exists (Granite_file);
>      #if (FileOK)
>          #include Granite_file
>      #else error concat ("Material color_map file \"", Granite_file, "\" doesn't
> exist.  Exiting."
>      #end // end if
> #end // end ifndef
> 

There is indeed an error there. Replace the following line:

#ifndef (_GRANITE_FILE_INC_)  #include "DakotaRedGranite.inc"  #end

by:

#ifndef (_GRANITE_FILE_INC_)  #local Granite_file = 
"DakotaRedGranite.inc"  #end

-- 
Thomas

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Op 30/05/2021 om 14:51 schreef Bald Eagle:
> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>> OK. This is a /cleanup/ version of the granite macro, and associated
>> DakotaRedGranite.inc file.
>>
>> The following things need to be addressed (in no particular order):
>>
>> - A comprehensive demo scene file
>> - A comprehensive documentation
>> - An investigation/implementation of Real World dimensions (should have
>> started with that, but you know of it goes...)
>> - Additional xxxGranite.inc files to be fed to the macro
> 
> Excellent.
> 
> I got dragged into the distasteful task of fixing/replacing my old cell phone
> (swapping out the motherboard has got me 99% of the way there) and haven't had a
> chance to delve into this yet.
> 
> Having written all of this, you would be the most knowledgeable about what to
> test / show off in a demo scene.
> 
We shall see how it goes. I have number of test scenes running at the 
moment. Still need some tweaking though.

> Depending on changes, documentation might not be comprehensive until it's all
> real-world tested-broken-fixed in the wild.
> 
I agree.

> My (essentially new) phone with the granite photos is the one that suddenly and
> inexplicably died - I will see if I can still retrieve them.  Maybe the
> dimension should be a parameter...
> 
That would be nice indeed.


granite in Canada (it was the one which most intrigued me) and found 
that it is not a granite as such, but a monzonite (granitoid). Does not 
matter much for our purpose; the mineral composition is different (less 
than 5% quartz compared to granites).

> I will look, at fiddling with the inc file - as this is likely to drive the
> creation of all of the previous items.
> 
Indeed. It is what I am going to do too in the coming days.

> 
> 
> Thanks for all of your expertise and industrious coding in this!
> I think it's pretty nice that we have some new patterns and materials that came
> out of this - relatively quickly - and hopefully a lot of the methods extend
> over to other materials.
> 
Thank you indeed. It became a fascinating project I confess. I certainly 
think it might generate spin-offs, either in the rock domain or in 
others maybe.

> I will get 2nd coffee and begin reading...
> 
...and I go food shopping now ;-)

-- 
Thomas

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Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> Concerning that last point, and with the knowledge that the granite
> /industry/ names /granite/ everything that is hard, grainy, pretty when
> polished, I have started to wonder if /all/ the granite codes provided
> originally by Daniel Mecklenburg (an employee of said industry) /are/
> really granites. There is little doubt imp, about Canadian Pink and
> North American Pink; Southern Gray and Medium Gray also seem to be
> genuine, but I need more info. However, I start to seriously scratch my
> head with the /black/ granites: Impala and India Black; and what to
> think of St. Andre Green? I think those are not granites at all but
> something else, gabbros, gneisses, I don't know what. Again, I need more
> info. What I want to say by all this, is that those rocks potentially
> may need a different approach in comparison to the granites proper.

According to the folks at our local granite supply store, some unique granite
formations turn out to be fairly small and inconsistent over distance. So some
variations of granite have been totally depleted and are no longer commercially
available.

Kind regards,
Dave Blandston
Suggested motto: "With POV-Ray anything is possible, but nothing is easy"

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Op 31/05/2021 om 10:11 schreef Dave Blandston:
> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>> Concerning that last point, and with the knowledge that the granite
>> /industry/ names /granite/ everything that is hard, grainy, pretty when
>> polished, I have started to wonder if /all/ the granite codes provided
>> originally by Daniel Mecklenburg (an employee of said industry) /are/
>> really granites. There is little doubt imp, about Canadian Pink and
>> North American Pink; Southern Gray and Medium Gray also seem to be
>> genuine, but I need more info. However, I start to seriously scratch my
>> head with the /black/ granites: Impala and India Black; and what to
>> think of St. Andre Green? I think those are not granites at all but
>> something else, gabbros, gneisses, I don't know what. Again, I need more
>> info. What I want to say by all this, is that those rocks potentially
>> may need a different approach in comparison to the granites proper.
> 
> According to the folks at our local granite supply store, some unique granite
> formations turn out to be fairly small and inconsistent over distance. So some
> variations of granite have been totally depleted and are no longer commercially
> available.
> 
> Kind regards,
> Dave Blandston
> Suggested motto: "With POV-Ray anything is possible, but nothing is easy"
> 
Interesting you say that and thanks for this info. When I searched 


them that were not operational any more (the majority, but over a long 
time period of a century or so). Looking also at the geological maps, 
depletion is very probable for many of them indeed. The mentioned 
granite is a very local occurrence I guess, only available around 


-- 
Thomas

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