This post could be subtitled "Fun with trace"

The hull of the ship is made of bezier patches created in Hamapatch when I
first started to learn POV. I scaled two copies of the hull differently to
create the inner and outer surfaces of the hull. At the time I had no clue
how to fill the space between the two hull surfaces where the gun ports and
sweep ports were cut through the bezier patches, so I just scaled 10 more
copies of the hull and placed them between the outer and inner hulls. It
worked from a distance, but was not a good solution when viewed close up.

I recently noticed in my online research that ships of the period had bolts
or rivets holding the planks to the ships frame timbers on the interior of
theship. I decided to use the trace function to place them (scaled
spheres). Epiphany! I could use the same process to locate points on the
inner and outer hulls and use these points as vertexes for triangles. The
triangles could then be used to cover the gap between the inner and outer
hulls.

I think it works rather nicely! I used enough triangles to smoothely conform
to the curved hull.

The second proud moment of the day was creating a texture that would give
the smooth bezier patches the look and feel of 3 dimensional planks. Here
is that texture for anybody that is interested.

#declare ShipGreen = <0.17,0.29,0.17>*0.5;
#declare ShipTan = <0.85,0.5,0.2>*0.8;
#declare ShipBlack = <0.05,0.05,0.05>;
#declare ShipGold =0.95*Gold;
#declare ShipRed =0.7*Scarlet;



#declare GreenPlanks2 =
        texture{
                pigment{
                        bozo
                        color_map {
                                [0.00 color rgb 1.0*ShipGreen]
                                [0.47 color rgb 0.99*ShipGreen]
                                [0.475 color rgb ShipTan]

                                [0.48  color rgb 0.85*ShipGreen]
                                [0.5 color rgb 0.85*ShipGreen]
                                [0.52 color rgb 1.1*ShipGreen]
                                [1.00 color rgb 1.0*ShipGreen]

                        }

                        scale <1,0.01,1>
                }


                normal{
                        pigment_pattern {
                                gradient y
                                color_map {
                                        [0.00 color rgb
1.0*<0.184,0.309,0.184>]
                                        [0.47 color rgb
1.0*<0.184,0.309,0.184>]
                                        [0.5  color rgb
0.65*<0.184,0.309,0.184>]
                                        [0.5 color rgb
0.65*<0.184,0.309,0.184>]
                                        [0.52 color rgb
1.0*<0.184,0.309,0.184>]
                                        [1.00 color rgb
1.0*<0.184,0.309,0.184>]
                                }
                        }
                        bump_size 5
                        turbulence 0.01
                }

                finish{
                        phong 0.85
                        phong_size 50
                        ambient 0
                }
        }


I think this has been a good day for me.

:)


Tim

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