EMAIL: dran@fly.cc.fer.hr NAME: Miroslav Hundak TOPIC: Glass COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Orb of Dranor COUNTRY: Croatia WEBPAGE: http://fly.cc.fer.hr/~dran RENDERER USED: Povray for Win95 3.0 TOOLS USED: pen and paper RENDER TIME: far too long (>24h) HARDWARE USED: Pentium-100, 32MB RAM IMAGE DESCRIPTION: P.S. Excuse my poor knowledge of English orthography (spelling). In an early morning, or late afternoon a hero came to the altar of Orb of Dranor to seek magick powers from the ghosts of kings and emperors long forgotten, who's souls now dwell inside the Orb. He or She had to pass many dangerous places and slay many powerful creatures to get to this place. Hero is very tired now after a long journey and an exhaustive fight with the ghosts of Orb. So He or She went to enjoy a swim in a refreshing waters of giant BlueEye Lake, before the winds bring stormy clouds from the north (front in picture), carelesly leaving equipment on the premises, like crown (cro.f. kruna) and sword by the water bowl and a shield leaning on a pillar, while magick of the Orb radiates red glow, as if it's a beacon for ships that sailed many many centuries ago. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: I rendered the image with +a0.2 +am2 +r3 options, and there it is. Because of the small color differences in the sky texture viewing this image in 24-bit is much better than in 16-bit colours. The idea was to make a crystal crown on a wooden polished table, preferably in a castle interior (stone walls, etc.). But. That seemed to simple, so I made a water bowl on a pillar and put the crown on the edge of bowl. Somehow that didn't work out very good. I put the water bowl with the crown in the secondary position, and designed some mean-looking fingers holding some sort of magic orb that glows on the tips of their nails and put it in the center of the scene. That was not enough offcourse. I added a few pillars, decorated floor and finaly a sword leaning on a water bowl. The top of the sword's handle is decorated with the green gem, and it is held by the same objects-fingers that hold the magic orb, except on a sword there are four simetrical fingers, and the gem is in the hand, not on the tips of nails. I put it all standing on a height-field that represents a small cape. After a several consultations with my younger brother I finally came to the decision to change the material that crown is made of, so it was crystal no more. Instead I made it look metallic with goldened surfaces. I did that because the crown is too small in the image for its details to be made out if it were transparent (crystalic) especially with the water behind it. The scene has heavy ambiental lighting for realism. Radiosity would do better justice to realism, but then I figured that it would be convenient for image to by rendered by the end of the century. Main light is area_light spanning widely from behind so that the shadows are so soft that it is hard to recognize them. I added extra light to the inside of the magic orb, which is why the orb has no phong or specular. The sky was initially light blue with scattered clouds, but I wanted something gloomy so I made a few modifications to the colours and it turned out unexpectedly well. Finally I added some finishing touches, like a cape in the far, and a shield (with Croatian standard) leaning on the pillar. The lake water has bumps for normal. I could have used ripples or waves, but I had no nerves to experiment with those.