At 04:55 10-11-2006, you wrote:
> Hi Garry,
> I remember that; I'm not aware of any changes in SP3... what I miss
> most is an Else statement!
I think what some of us agreed on was that the 'EVAL' word was
missing from VSL . We had that awesome option with RPL in V3.x
but for some reason it was forgotten in V4.x's VSL , maybe for
good reason , maybe not (not sure) .
'ELSE' is missing , but what about 'or' etc. ? As I said,
VESA suggests it can all be done now (I think) , but I have
never seen an example of exactly how that is possible .
It can be done but it's more cumbersome...
OR: just put different If statements behind each other ->
example:
IF A>0 OR B>1 ... becomes in VSL:
If (A>0)
.... [statements]
If B>1
... [the same statements]
AND: nest them:
IF A>0 AND B>1 ... becomes in VSL:
If (A>0)
If (B>1)
[statements]
ELSE:
IF A>0 ... ELSE ...
becomes in VSL:
If (A>0)
...[statements]
If A<=0)
...[statements]
Correct me if I'm wrong...
> I'm not sure what you are referring to, it's been a long time
> since I worked with V3!
> Mark H
I think I was talking about using the 'EVAL' word to distribute
noises in V3.x . Noises can be used to distribute objects in V5
but to me it seems more difficult to determine just exactly
where those noises should be used on a mesh without the 'EVAL'
word available to "evaluate" a mesh's particular qualities .
Then again , you brought up a good point already about evalu-
ating a displacement mapped mesh as opposed to a nurbs/polygon
mesh .
The thing I meant didn't have to do with displacement specifically...
it's just a tool (imaginary for now) that allows pasting of objects
procedurally, using VSL or textures instead of manual hard labour ;)
JS mentions that 95% accuracy could be determined via the poly
mesh , perhaps .
I tried combining displacement with a real pre-displaced mesh, it
basically works but in my experiments the proportion of displacement
id larger that 5%. You don't want the mesh to have a too high
resolutuion or your render times will explode. The landscape features
are too soft if the resolution and displacement are both too low.
Myself , I'm not sure if any kind of object placement can be
obtained using displacement mapping render techniques . There
may be a danger that Dis-map renders may be relegated to Mars
type surfaces where no objects exist on a surface from high
camera altitudes and steep camera angles .
Displacement isn't suitable for close-ups, that's a limitation: the
camera can't get 'into' these landscapes. I think that's one of the
most difficult things to achieve: both large-scale and small-scale in
the same scene...
This could be the real question after all : can we distribute
objects accurately on the surface of a render-time displaced
nurbs mesh ? I would say "no" . That means having to go to
high density poly/nurbs/sds meshes instead and high-powered
hardware to accomplish it, if you are going to raytrace it .
studio
I also worked with high-density meshes in poly and triset mode, this
is more flexible than the displacement approach but you see the polys
;( It would be nice to have displacement available in these modes too.
Matthias: nice movie, I'm aware of the nice Distribution tool but I
was looking for procedural ways to do this :)
good luck,
-Mark H
