Hope I'm not distracting you, 'coz I can't see anybody in the driving seat. :blink:

I think the second ladder onthe left ismissing a screw - you can use mine (W.I.P.)

Rô

Quote - Fazzel: I assume just a typo in your post, because I guess the script worked on your computer

Many thanks, Fazzel. I must remember to double check the listings. :rolleyes:
(Glad to see you cracked it  )

Quote - Mariner: Shouldn't there be more here to create the 3 or 4 different mt5 files based on the different disp values???????

Mariner, If we were making 3 different materials to be used as alternatives then this would be the case.
Here, however, we are "layering" three displacements on top of each other in one material, so there is only one displacemento map.
The "Disp += ........" is just a shorthand way of saying "Disp = Disp + ..........", so what we are doing is adding one "thread" on top of the rest.

Rô

Quote - English looks a lot different from how it sounds (just like most languages).

Unlike Portuguese!
Lucky for me - an Englishman in Brazil.
With the exception of a couple of variants for the letter "x", you say things exactly like you see 'em.

Rô

Quote - Could you possibly show these with the corrections?

The code about 10 posts up (with the golden primitive props) is the almost correct version.
It looks different because, instead of coding  three separate coils, I made a "coil" function and then just called it three times with different parameters.

As bagginsbill pointed out there is still a correction to be made there however:
The lines:
    k = Max(k, 0)                 # avoid negative numbers ;-)
    DispThread = Sqrt(k * (Diam - k))

Should read:
    k = Max(k * (Diam - k, 0)  # avoid negative numbers ;-)
    DispThread = Sqrt(k)

It worked without the correction, but best to be sure.

Rô

Thanks for the kind words, mariner.

Here's another one (W.I.P.) - the one in the front is (more or less) what I was aiming for, the one's in the background were just happy little accidents.

Rô

symV = Min(V, 1-V)

Yep, another nice trick - that should make things easier.

Quote - I hope you don't mind the challenges. I'm enjoying the fact that I seem to have a kindred spirit.

Mind? Nah, this is fun. To me procedural material is the way to go.
Don't know if you've seen FilterForge (2D procedural textures - in beta test), this is what got me into this stuff. (There I go by the name of "byRo" - pity somebody already had that name here)

Now that you have made it possible to create 3D textures with just a few lines of "code", I do find it rather strange that more folks haven't chipped in.
I'm sure we have barely sratched the surface (ugh, a pun?) of what can be done.

Rô
(PS I just can't resist a challenge)

Quote - Oh wow you did it. Fantastic - this is going into the manual ok?

OK, when somebody gives you something nice - it's good manners to give something back.

Rô

I'll second this! :thumbupboth:

Been using Notepad++ for some time now (never had any problems).
Besides being FREE! :biggrin: it's great because it understands the layout of many different languages, like HTML, C++, SQL, Java and, of special interest for those who "dabble", - Python.

Rô

Not too sure about the "swoop" bit, but here what I got.

Church coloumns

##########
s = Surface(Marble1(GRAY8, Blend(.5*ORANGE, GRAY8, .5), 2.2, gc=1),1,WHITE, 0.6, 0.02)

General Stuff

Radius = 0.16                        # For standard cylinder prop
TwoPi = 2.0 * pi                    # Need this a lot
Angle = TwoPi * U                    # Turn U into an angle
Disp = 0

Torus Routine

def Torus(Start, End):
    Diam = End - Start
    k = (V - Start) % Diam
    k = Max(k * (Diam - k), 0)        # avoid negative numbers ;-)
    DispTorus = Sqrt(k)
    return DispTorus

Four-Sided Parts

Trig4 = Max ( Abs(Cos(Angle)), Abs(Sin(Angle)) )
Size4 = 1.1                            # Relative to the radius
Disp4 = Radius * (Size4/Trig4 - 1)    # 4-sided surface   

Eight-Sided Parts

Eighth = TwoPi / 8.0
Trig8 = Max (Abs(Cos((Angle+Eighth)%TwoPi)), Abs(Sin((Angle+Eighth)%TwoPi)))
Trig8 = Max (Trig4, Trig8)            # includes the 45 degree angles
Size8 = 0.8                            # Relative to the radius
Disp8 = Radius * (Size8/Trig8 - 1)    # 8-sided surface   

Disp = Blender (Disp4, Disp8, InRange(V, 0.15, 0.85))

Add Bottom Torus

T_Start = 0.15
T_End = 0.22
T_Disp = Torus (T_Start, T_End)
Disp = Blender ( Disp, T_Disp, InRange(V, T_Start, T_End))

Add Top Torus

T_Start = 0.78
T_End = 0.85
T_Disp = Torus (T_Start, T_End)
Disp = Blender ( Disp, T_Disp, InRange(V, T_Start, T_End))

s.Displacement = 30 * Disp * (Abs(N(0,1,0)) <= .01) # no caps

As for the smooth blending between the square and circular parts, it's probably just a matter of putting in the right bias (still learning)

Rô

How about something different - squaring a cylinder maybe?

Squaring the column

#############

s = Surface(GRAY7,1,GRAY9, 0.3, 0.01)

Radius = 0.16            #For standard cylinder prop
Angle = 2 * pi * U        #Turn U into an angle
Trig = Max ( Abs(Cos(Angle)), Abs(Sin(Angle))) #Switch between sin / cos as we go around
Disp = Radius * (1 /Trig - 1)    #Displace out to make the flat surface

Disp = Disp * Interpolate(V, ['d', 0.1,1,1,0,'d', 0.5, 0,'d', 0.1,0,1]) #just the ends

s.Displacement = 30 * Disp * (Abs(N(0,1,0)) <= .01) # no caps, scalefactor adjusted by eye

This is fun (but, then again, I have a wierd idea of "fun")

Rô

Function to make a displacement thread

def MakeThread(Turns, Threads):
    Throw = 1.0 / Turns
    Diam = Abs(Throw / Threads)
    k = (V + Throw * U) % Diam
    k = Max(k, 0)                        # avoid negative numbers ;-)
    DispThread = Sqrt(k * (Diam - k))
    return DispThread
   

Main Script

s = Surface(IColor(210,210,150),1,ORANGE, 5, 0.05)

Make 3 different threads

Disp = 0
Disp += MakeThread (6,2)
Disp += MakeThread (-4,10)
Disp += MakeThread (2,100)

s.Displacement = 10 * Disp

With a wee bit of work getting the seams and UV's lined up this could be quite useful.

Rô

Seems that Poser isn't in to imaginary numbers. :sneaky:
Some of the Square root nodes get inputs that "mathematically" are zero, but in practice there must be some rounding errors and it goes just a tad negative - enough to throw off a whole block of the surface.
So the fix is to check this (Clamp probably) before the square root.

Thanks for the help guys - I was really worried that there was some sort of limitation to using displacement, now I'm happy again.

Later, I'll post a new script including the fix and the simplification.

Rô

That's a neat simplification! Great.

Quote - I don't have time to try it now, but you might want to make a cylinder in some other tool that has no end caps and uses a lot of small polygons. Maybe triangles would be better than quads, too.

Tried that, didn't change anything. Made a few cylinders in Carrara with tons of quands and / or triangles - still got the punch through.

However, I just realized that the answer may be right in front of me.
The preview image for the surface is already showing some strange things - see the arrows onthe attached image..
I'll try and discover if this is a problem in the algorithm or if Matmatic hit some sort of boundary in one of the components.

Rô

That's strange!
My machine is anything but top class (1.5GHz Athlon  / 768M RAM), the settings (posted) aren't special at all and this renders in 30 seconds.
The "cables" are actually the size of bagginsbill's columns (300% scale, 800% y scale) so I guess the displacements are rather large.
I had thought that maybe it was because I had been working in Centimeters and not Poser units - but that didn't change anything.
When I increase the Displacement Bounds in the Render up to 10, still takes less than a minute.

Another question.....
The displacements bounds of all the individual objects were at 200.
I tried using other values - but no matter what value I used, after rendering the value wer all back at 200.
Is this normal?

Rô