A simple hill layout file. Each stroke defines a line of hills.
The tool generates a row of curved segments following each stroke. Each "hill bump", in turn, is made up of three arcs, differently distorted (to produce a brushstroke effect). Some of the "hill bumps" have chains of smaller bumps hanging off their endpoints.
Note that in the second stroke, one of the chains goes off at an unfortunate angle, obscuring the bump immediately to its left. This causes an ugly discontinuity. The tool does not currently provide any way of fixing this; my only recourse is to change the random-number seed and hope for a better arrangement of chains.
The size of the bumps is controllable. The third (S-shaped) stroke has a bump scale nearly twice as large as the others. Since it's also closer to the bottom edge, it looks closer than the other hill lines. (If the top stroke had a smaller bump scale, the illusion of perspective would be even stronger.)
The same image, with color. Each hill stroke influences the color of points near it. The first stroke exerts a grey influence; the second red; the third green.
Last updated January 21, 2003.