Re: [TCLUG:17898] creative waste of processing power -- 3D landscaperenders

[Philip C Mendelsohn <mend0070@tc.umn.edu>]

On Fri, 19 May 2000, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote:

> anyone familiar enough with landscape generating tools to make
> recommendations? Terraform and POV-Ray come to mind; but I've only played
> with POV-Ray a little bit, and only seen the screengrabs from Terraform.

I can't really answer your question, but I can tell you that you might
also be interested in looking at the United States Geologic Surveys system
for doing such things.  It's called DEM (digital elevation models) and
allows things like survey files to be stored in a prescribed format.  Some
of their links might well tell how to do just what you describe.

I heard of it as a package for Mathematica, but I know that these files
can be taken and sent to POV-Ray somehow.

The following link are taken from some of the Mathematica package.  I hope
they are more general.  Also, the point I'm getting at, is you might be
able to use maps of real places, if a DEM exists for the area in which you
live or wish to use.

Hope that's somewhat relevant.

---

Follow links to download 1 degree DEMs, or learn more about DEM \
data structures.

http://www-nmd.usgs.gov/

For information about 1 degree DEMs, see

http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/glis/hyper/guide/1_dgr_dem

1-degree DEMs by state:
http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/glis/hyper/guide/1_dgr_demfig/states.html 


-- 
Lottery:    a tax on people who are bad at math