TITLE: Artmagic
NAME: Claude GUILLEMOT
COUNTRY: France
EMAIL: cguille@hol.fr
WEBPAGE: http://wwwperso.hol.fr/~cguillem
TOPIC: Magic
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: artmagic.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Pov-ray 3.0

TOOLS USED: 
    Pov-ray 3.0. Photoshop 2.0 for height fields and image-maps

RENDER TIME: 
    2 hours

HARDWARE USED: 
    PowerMac 7200/75


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

In the bedroom of Vincent Van Gogh, in Arles, the smell of oil and fresh paint
hangs in the air. Vincent has just gone out to the town to post a letter to his
brother, Th_o. He writes about the painting he has just finished :
" ...This time, my bedroom, quite simply. Looking at the painting should be
restful to the mind, or rather to the imagination. The walls are pale violet,
the tiled floor is red. The wood of the bed and chairs is the yellow of fresh
butter. The sheet and pillows are a very light lemon-green, the washstand is a
shade of orange and the basin, blue. The doors are lilac. That's all. The
shutters are closed and the room is empty..."

The magic of art...The magic of a journey backwards from a painting to its
model, from the imaginary to the real. As soon as I heard the topic "magic",
this vision took hold of me as beeing the expression of an essential magic. A
patient, meticulous, scrupulous quest to give shape, colour and life to each
object, each texture, each light, guided by a few strokes of paint on a canvas,
a few words in a letter...
The magic of ray-tracing...
 

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

Let's break with the tradition that says a magician should never reveal his
tricks. Here, there's only one trick : Pov-Ray for Macintosh. Some help from
Photoshop to create and convert the image-maps (pictures, floor tiles, palette,
walls...) and draw the height fields (cloth, clothes, palette...). Delicate
work on the lighting : area lights on the entire surface of the celling, a
faint light point (0,5) at the exact spot of the camera to soften the whole
picture and avoid shadows, and a harsh, yellow-toned light outside.