Procedural vector map elements -- some experiments

[gilgamec]

Can you feed a shape into your procedure, and generate complete trees within that shape? I mean, so the trees on the edges don't get cropped.

I'm not certain what you mean about edges getting cropped; I can't see any of that in the examples above. Are you talking about an arbitrary forest shape, or an arbitrary tree shape? Both should be quite possible (and the edges should never be cut off); an arbitrary tree shape would be easier than fitting exactly to an arbitrary forest shape, if only because the shapes of the trees varies more than the shapes of component circles.

What software are you using to generate trees with your procedure?

I'm using Asymptote, which is designed for making technical diagrams, but can be coerced into doing stuff like this.

Of course, Photoshop will rasterize vectors and PDFs. (Remember that a PDF is just a containter for vectors and/or rasters of any resolution(s) and/or type.)

I'm sorry, I should have been more specific; Asymptote is giving me PDF-encapsulated PostScript, which I want to rasterize in some automatic fashion. Photoshop would, of course, work; I'm currently using Illustrator (they probably use the same engine, anyway). However, this means that I have to manually load and save every time; if I could use ImageMagick for the conversion, I could just put the final rasterization into my toolchain and have it done automatically at the end.

In the end, it's not so much of an issue, I was just hoping that someone here might have some suggestions.

Can you add a chance of a dead tree or stump being generated into the product? Also random generation of a glade or underbrush could add to the end product.

Hmmm... Could you suggest some examples of dead trees? I'm not certain how to express that in 2D. As for underbrush, though, that might be an idea. I'll have to look at it....