Tool request: object scatter

[Michael Horvath]

I started a thread on the POVray newsgroup:

http://news.povray.org/povray.advanced-u...ay.org%3E/

The "clutter.mcr" script mentioned down-thread works extremely well, but does NOT play nice with `mesh` or `mesh2` objects. (Some kind of bug in the script.) Your best bet is to generate a 2D grayscale image representation of your terrain, i.e., a "heightmap" or "heightfield", then feed that into the script.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heightmap

Tools such as World Machine (the one I use) can generate such images. Other programs include Wilbur and Terragen. If your image is 1 pixel = 1 stud resolution, it should work well in most cases.

I will write a tutorial when I get all the issues ironed out. (I have to convert my terrain back into the 2D grayscale image format first, since I deleted the original one by accident.) There are some examples in the discussion thread I linked to for you to look at, in the meantime.

If you are interested in the bug I mentioned, see this thread:

http://news.povray.org/povray.advanced-u...ay.org%3E/

You can see it working here:

ldview_screenshot_024.fs by Michael Horvath, on Flickr

That's 24000 trees, and LDView is not happy!