I am trying to remember the name of the company but from about 1900 to
WWII Germany had a very popular product. It was called something like
Anchorstone but by Google that is not it. It was in the Lego, Lincoln
Logs, and those plastic snap-together non-lego bricks. 

	They were sets of small actual stones that mimiced the architecture of
medieval stone construction. Special sets would permit the construct of
famous castles and such. There were shapes for the basic "brick" shape,
arch, keystone, and interface shapes. They matched what you would see in
closeup of those structures. 

	So here is another approach to imitating the real world. A modest
number of simple shapes that only have to be gotten right once can be
placed over and over to make a complex design. And of for example the
edges are slightly rounded they will survive closeups as well as long
shots of the same structure. One could animate traveling along a roman
road and have the far correctly translate to the near while moving would
work. 

	Also a texture could be chosen such that it could be randomized for
each usage of a shape so natural irregularities would appear. (And if
that roman road perhaps some random grass from the cracks along the
edges. Random horse droppings are optional.) 

	Anyway, just a related thought to how to make a B5.

Post a reply to this message

I tried it and the result is on images, the funny flashlight cum
spaceship. That image isn't close enough to see the effect but the
consequence of this method is time. What should be a very simple, fast
rendering image without the building block approach took a bit over 6
hours on a PII/333. 

	That is acceptable for stills but since the point of view does not
change there is not much to gain by using it. 

	Next I will try scaling the texture by the viewing distance from the
camera. That should be a simple sine function. 

-- 
There are hundreds of billions of species.
Taste before you exteriminate.
	-- The Iron Webmaster, 69

Post a reply to this message