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Latest update June 14 2009 19:14:20 |
    
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The Genesis Toolkit
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The Genesis Toolkit is a set of executables to work with POV-Ray heightfields. All of them have to be started at the promt with a few parameters. (This can be done using a batch or script file) At this time there are executables for Linux and M$-Windows (for those who havn't upgraded) My thanks to Michael Muldown who wrote a graphical user interface for the Genesis Toolkit. So if you prefer to use a GUI instead of typing all these command options, you can download it at his site: GT - a graphical user interface for the Genesis Toolkit | 
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October, 11 1998
July, 26 1998
June, 20 1998
The Genesis Tools:
- ROUGHT
- To create a physical map of a heightfield
- GEN
- To place objects onto the surface of a heightfield
- CUTTER
- Cutting away all objects which are invisible for the POVRAY-camera
- GIF2TGA / TGA2GIF
- to convert heightfield file formats
- HFMERGE
- To merge 2 heightfields.
- Download the genesis Toolkit
- ROUGHT
The Vegetation Package:
- Sample Objects, designed for the Genesis Toolkit, including two trees, a fern and grass
ROUGH
The job of ROUGH is to create a map of the heightfield. There are different types of vegetation in a landscape.
On rocky areas for example there will be less vegetation than on plane areas.
The vegetation is also changing at different height levels.
ROUGH makes a map of the landscape, this map is a GIF-file and can be used as an image_map for POVRAY, or as a plantmap for GEN. Each of these area types has its own color index in the resulting GIF file.
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Options for ROUGH:
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The -r option can be used to fine tune the roughtness detector to your requirements. The higher the value, the more vegetation will be detected.
GEN
The job of GEN is to compute object positions for objects, which are to be set onto the surface of a heightfield. The output of GEN is an include file (.INC) containing all objects.GEN needs some informations about the heightfield:
The max. input file size supported is 2000x2000 pixel.
Options for GEN:
- -i Input file (Heightfield, 24bit TGA format)
- -o Output file (the .INC file to be included by the POV-Ray scenefile).
- -m specifies the plantmap file. It contains the information where to set the objects.
- -p tells the program at which palette entry in the plantmap objects appaer.
- -s to control the average space between each objects.
- -x tells the program...
- -y ...the size of the heightfield...
- -z ...used by the POV-Ray scene.
- -d no object below this height-value
- -u no object above this height-value
- -rp The option -rr is used to avoid or allow random placement of the objects.
- -o Output file (the .INC file to be included by the POV-Ray scenefile).
- -rp0 don't use random placement
- -rp1 use random placement
- -rr The option -rr is used to avoid or allow ramdomized rotation around the Y-axis.
- -rr0 don't use random rotation
- -rr1 use random rotation
- -rs 0 no use / 1...100 use of random scaling
- -rs0 don't use random scaling
- -rs1...100 use random scaling
- -rd random seed
- -n the name of the object to be set on the surface. Used in the outputfile.
EXAMPLE:
GEN.EXE -itestland.tga -otrees.inc -mplantmap.gif -x500 -y100 -z500 -p2 -s6 -d3 -r1 -no01
The Heightfield Size
| GEN assumes that the lower left corner of the heightfield is originated at <0,0,0>.
To know the size of the heightfield, GEN needs to know the vector for the upper right corner.
height_field {
tga "scene2.tga"
scale <512, 100, 512>
pigment{ color White }
}
The settings for the example heightfield are: -x512 -y100 -z512 back to the options |
The Plantmap
The plantmap tells GEN where to set the objects on a height field. In this example, i took the output file of ROUGH and draw some red areas with a paintprogram (palette index 4 in the gif file).EXAMPLE:
-mmap.gif -p4
The file map.gif is used as plant map and objects are planted at palette index 4.
Index 1
Index 2
Index 3
Index 4
Space between the objects
The option -s is used to control the average space between the objects.The smaller the value, the more objects.
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Random Placement
The option -rp is used to avoid or allow ramdomized placement of the objects.It is used like a flag:
The option -rp does not change the amount of objects.
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Random Rotation
The option -rr is used to avoid or allow ramdomized rotation of the objects.It is used like a flag:
Each object will be rotated around its Y-axis (randomly 0...360deg) before it is placed.
The Outputfile
The result of GEN's job is an include file for POV-Ray. It contains all objects with the current positions on the heightfield. The includefile will look like this:
object{o01 translate<26.262139,7.031357,306.000076>}
object{o01 translate<30.433226,3.125048,245.732643>}
object{o01 translate<36.720893,3.515679,239.608036>}
object{o01 translate<35.880596,5.468833,247.161550>}
object{o01 translate<37.751442,3.906310,354.641423>}
object{o01 translate<43.295404,3.906310,239.690802>}
: : : : : :
: : : : : :
: : : : : :
object{o01 translate<468.526063,5.078202,433.829356>}
CUTTER
The idear of CUTTER is to cut away all objects which are invisible for the POVRAY camera, or which are to far away to be visible. This will decrease the total amount of objects in the final POVRAY scene and helps to save memory, parsing and render time for a scene.
To do this CUTTER needs some informations:
I have added a simple parser to read POVRAY camera declarations. Just name the file with the camera declaration and CUTTER will try to get all needed values.
Options for CUTTER are:
-i name of the INC-file, including all objects
-o name of the output-INC-file, the visible objects
-p name of the POV-file, including the camera declaration
-e max distance limit (0 no limit, 1...~ value for limit)
-s min distance limit (0 no limit, 1...~ value for limit)
The camera parser of CUTTER is really stupid. Every expression should be in a single row and you may not use any arithmetic expression in a vector. Comments with // are supported, those with /*...*/ not.
I.e. this is a valid camera:
camera {
// location<100,20,120> // this comment is OK
location<360,3.80,75>
direction <0,0,1>
up <0,1,0>
right <1.3333333,0,0>
look_at <118,20,230>
}
This one is not valid:
camera {
location<360-17,3.80+clock*100,75-(clock*100)>
direction <0,0,1+1> /* this comment is not OK */
up <0,1,0>
right <1.3333333,0,0> look_at <118,20,230>
}
GIF2TGA / TGA2GIF
GIF2TGA converts GIF heightfields into TGA heightfields. The Usage is:GIF2TGA.EXE infile.gif outfile.tga
TGA2GIF converts TGA heightfields into GIF heightfields. The Usage is:
TGA2GIF.EXE -iinfile.tga -ooutfile.gif
-i specifies the input TGA file
-o specifies the output GIF file
HFMERGE
HFMERGE is a tool to merge two heightfields or make some manipulations. You can add two heightfields, make a subtraction, shift a heigthfield up or down, scale it, cut it at a level and so on.Options for HFMERGE:
- -a name of input heightfield A
- -b name of input heightfield B (only used for method 1...5)
- -o name of outputfile
- -v 0...100% (only used for method 6...11)
- -m to specify the method to be used:
- -b name of input heightfield B (only used for method 1...5)
- -m1 (A+B)/2
- -m2 A+B
- -m3 A-B
- -m4 max(A,B)
- -m5 min(A,B)
- -m6 A+v% (shift up)
- -m7 A-v% (shift down)
- -m8 A below v% of total height
- -m9 A above v% of total height
- -m10 scale A by v% of total height
- -m11 A + random(v%)
- -m2 A+B
When using method 1...5 make shure that both heightfields have exactly the same resolution!
In this example below, the first heightfield is a landscape created by GFORGE.
I have merged it with a mandelbrot-heightfield using method -m1.
| 1.Heightfield (created with GFORGE) |
| 2.Heightfield (created with WinFract) |
| Here is the resulting heightfield. I used ROUGH for the colormaps, to get a better impression of the shapes. |
Sample Objects
This objects are designed to be small in memory, so that a large amount of them can be used. 
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| Trees, fern and grass, The Vegetation Package | The trees are looking better in distance. |
Download the Genesis Toolkit |