I made these images using the freeware raytracer POV-Ray, and using as input my own heightfield generators Gforge and HF-lab. To show some possibilities, I made a sample-sheet of landscape variations. I have written various other small programs.

The Asteroid Plant This composition won an Internet raytrace contest (Aug'95)

Lone Tree A tree casts shadows in a misty morning, showing POV3's atmospheric fog feature. The tree was done with LPARSER. Like most fog pictures, this one really needs a truecolor (24 bit) screen for proper display.

Ridges #7 A highly convoluted ridge network from the HF-Lab 'warp' operator

Ridges #4 A smoother version of HF-Lab ridges

Ripples #1 A tiled, smooth ripple pattern from an iterative mapping simulating the flow of a fluid; appears almost like a fabric.

Vortex #2 A whirlpool shape from HF-Lab, done with another iterative mapping.

More images

These animations were rendered one frame at time using Gforge, other custom software, and POV-Ray in the same manner as the still images above. They were then assembled into an MPEG file using the Berkeley mpeg_encode program. I have more of them, but I don't have disk space to put them here.

drift2 A two-dimensional movie of a two-dimensional flow pattern, generated directly from HF-Lab (202 k).

erosion#3 Rivers cut valleys into the sides of a mountain range as they dwindle into smoothly-rounded hills.(320 k)

asteroid#1 An asteroid tumbles in space (full cycle; can be looped) (1.9 meg)

nugget #2 A metallic-hued lump morphs into a spiky ball, then recovers.(1.4 meg)

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