Page last ipdated 17th January, 2000
	'Gardens'
	Time to trace: 5 hours 56 minutes 37 second (21397 seconds) Image Description Late afternoon in a neat formal garden during summer... The main reason to try this image was to see if I could create a 'striped' mown lawn effect, which I think I have managed to do. Once this was done, the rest of the objects seemed to fit it... the paved area, the sundial, the blossom resting on the grass, the cat fascinated with the butterfly. If I had more time (and skill) I would redo the cat and butterfly objects, add a few plants to the image and adjust the lighting. The zip file contains everything for the image apart from the cat and butterfly mesh objects and their texture files. The heightfields in the archive are reduced to keep the file size down. texture. Image Notes There are several components to the image... Soil: You can't actually see much of it, but there is a heightfield for the soil. This heightfield is made from 4 basic heightfields which were derived from a single image. The heightfields are a mirror image, a flip image and a mirrored flipped image. By creating a union of these shapes, you can create a seamless heightfield. Grass: The grass is based on Gilles Tran's grass macros. I have modified them to have a different grass blade patch and have altered the placement macro. There are 4 different 'patches' of grass, each containing 2500 blades of grass. Within each patch, most of the blades point in roughly the same direction. By having rows of patches which are alternately rotated 0 or 180, you get the striped grass effect. During the image construction I started hitting my PC memory limits, so I had to convert my mesh objects into the mesh2 format supported by the MegaPatch. This meant that I had to first get the grass creation script to output the mesh to a file and then I had to write a simple program to convert the mesh object into a mesh2 format object. The same script was used to convert the gravel mesh object. Sundial: The sundial is a CSG construction. There are two parts to the item - the base and the actual dial. The base was created by making a shape which matched the profile of the base, then differencing it from each side of a simple box. The dial at the top is a genuine model of a sundial (well, according to instructions found at http://www.sundials.co.uk). There is quite a lot of detail to the dial which unfortunately does not show up at 800x600. Paved area: The bricks are superelipsoid objects which are individually scaled, rotated and translated and placed within a superelipsoid 'concrete'. As there is a scaled normal on these bricks, I had to use the POV MegaPatch to correctly render them. Gravel: Each piece of gravel (around the base of the sundial and in-between the lawn and the paved area) is a simple mesh. All pieces are randomly sclaed, rotated and coloured before being placed. Blossom: There are about 150 blossom leaves distributed on the grass area. The individual leaves are based on a single petal from Glenn McCarter's rose model in his 'Drama of Cinema' image. Plant Pots: The plant pots are simple CSG objects and the soil is a heightfield. Trial and error helped position the plant pot which is on its side. Rake: The rake is another piece of CSG, and is based on one I should use more to keep my garden tidy! Cat: The cat is a Poser 3 model, positioned in Poser and converted by Thomas Baier's 3DS2Pov conversion utility. The output from 3DS2Pov was then modified to reference an image file containing the texture for the animal. I think the cat is probably the worst component of the scene. Butterfly: The butterfly is originally one of the stock objects which comes with Ray Dream 3D, exported as a .dfx file, converted to a .3ds file by Keith Rule's Crossroads, then converted to a mesh2 object by Thomas Baier's 3DS2Pov conversion utility. Simple procedural textures were then applied. As with the cat figure, I think the butterfly lacks a little *something*. Lighting: There are two lights used in the scene. The main light represents the sun. It is a large area light but quite distant. The angle of the sun in the sky is about 0.5, so the size of the area light reflects this. The second light is a 'filler' light positioned at the same point as the camera. This second light adds a little depth to the image. Comments From chris@bluelectrode.com: Well, it has a cat so I'll have to give it high scores;) Overall, it turned out well, although I think it could have used more color. I liked the stripped freshly trimmed lawn effect. Good job. I think the lawn was the best thing in the image, but a lot of the credit to that has to go to Gilles Tran who originally created one of the grass blades and made the texture. From clintona@ibm.net: The realism is astounding. I love the grass effect, and the modeling is great too. Thanks. From bill@apocalypse.org: sharp and attractive Thanks Bill! From soulmates@gci.net: You know, the cat's not bad. Except.. Well.. What's with the seam running down it's middle? :{) The seam is a problem with the uv texture mapping and I don't know how to get rid of it. When I next get some spare time, I'm going to play around with using Chris Colefax' mesh compressor and hair growth macros to try and give the cat hair. From YaelParis@operamail.com: The only noticeable default is in the top right of the picture the grass is too "wavy". The sundial is maybe too perfect, I advice adding some defaults in the stone using CSG. The edge are not natural. I was going to try and bevel the edges of the sundial, but didn't have the time. From whhale@nvl.army.mil: Did your cat recently have surgery See the not above concerning uv mapping. From tlyons@gnn.com: nice cat!!! Again, hopefully when I have some time I'll be able to add some fur... From tom@tomandlu.force9.co.uk: Lots to like, but the cat needs some hair, and the stonework some weathering. I like the stripe. Thanks. See above for some notes about the cat. From Alain.Culos@bigfoot.com: The grass looks impressively realistic and I like the way you cut through the grass and soil to plant your sundial. The paved area is good looking too, but I'm not attracted by the rest much. Well OK, the rake is nice. I think the pots are not as well done as the cat (too much reflection, maybe you used plastic ?). Finally it is a technical challenge, but it lacks art. The pots have a 'dull' finish, which is like plastic. I also agree with your comments concerning technical vs art. I've had a look at all my images over the past 2 years of POV work and they all seem to be technically oriented and not artistic. Ho, hum, probably says something about me! From wozzeck@club-internet.fr: Very nice, a good piece of spring in winter! There is a strange artifact on your cat, which could have been avoided IMHO using some algorithmic texturing. The lawn-mower traces are strange and not realistic at all: they should be wider and turn around the sundial. See above for notes about the cat. As for the lawn stripes, I measured the curring width of my lawn mower which is 25cm. This is the same 'size' as the stripes in the images. As for turning around the sundail, maybe, maybe not... From albiaprime@aol.com: Technical - wow! full marks! good work Artistic - nicely balanced Theme - nice lawn, but it could be anywhere so half marks for theme My strength is technical - art and concept may follow! From mar@physics.usyd.edu.au: The grass turned out very nicely indeed. This is about the best grass I've seen in a rendering. Good atention to detail shown eveywhere in this image. Just a few criticisms: The pots and sundial could use some layered textures to make them look a little bit dirty, and I think a bed of flowers along the paving edge, or around the sundial base would add a great deal to the composition, which is a litle bare. Another thing I have noticed looking at my previous images is that they are all a little sparse. I should probably spend a little more time on each image and try and add more. But this would also mean that I couldn't pay as much attention to some of the other aspects of the image. Hmm... need to try and strike the right balance...