Jim Charter <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote:
> >
> Thanks.  Yes that was some mind bending code to write for my feeble
> little mass of grey matter.  After seeing your efforts I went back to
> review what I done only to find that the sdl is all but incomprehensible.

Yeah, I feel your pain. My own scene file has more //comments// that actual
code!  It was the only way I could keep track of all the nested #ifs and
such. It's probably the *longest* code that I've yet attempted, and could
probably benefit from some house-cleaning.
>
> The next trick, as you did too I am sure, was to utilize the
> trace function not only to locate contact points on the surface of the
> tree, but then to accumulate underlying vines into the trace target so
> that subsequent traces would find them too.

Sad to say, I didn't do that.  But should have. I was actually amazed that
my image 'looked like' the vines overlayed each other. A happy (though
unexpected) result of a tiny piece of arcane code, meant for something
else.

> ...So I implemented, I
> believe, a technique where I did traces over a certain interval and used
> only the "highest" points as the basis for a spline describing the
> overriding vine.  I could tune the interval and number of samples which
> gave the ability to have it follow the surface to a controllable degree
> (somewhat)

Fascinating. I'll gonna try incorporating that into my own vine-making.
>
Ken

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