TITLE: Weight of Light NAME: Fabien MOSEN COUNTRY: BELGIUM EMAIL: 101741.541@compuserve.com WEBPAGE: soon, soon... TOPIC: GREAT ENGINEERING ACHIEVEMENTS COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT JPGFILE: fmwax.jpg ZIPFILE: fmwax.zip RENDERER USED: POV 3.02 MS-DOS TOOLS USED: paper, pencil. RENDER TIME: 132 HOURS (5 days !) HARDWARE USED: AMD K6/233 - 64 Mb IMAGE DESCRIPTION: This is an interior view of the working room of the Johnson Wax administration building, in Racine, Wisconsin. It was created by Frank Lloyd Wright, maybe the greatest architect of all the times (who, if not him ?). Her is some explanation quoted from the F.L. Wright cd-rom, edited by micro$oft : ( << Wright's vision was of a great workplace supported by tall slender columns. But the building regulations called for a minimum 30" diameter column. He said, "so thick you wouldn't be able to see across the room." First he would have to reinvent the column. Through structural continuity he transformed the massive shear cap into the 18 ft, 6" petal that cantilevers out to become the roof itself. The new column was 21 ft high-31 ft in the lobby-tapering from 22" diameter at the top to a 9" bronze crowsfoot base. The transition from horizontal roof to the vertical column is made through a 'calyx-capital,' a series of digital stepped rings from 'petal to stem.' The continuity of structural steel makes roof and column one: the roof becomes the point, transferring 400 square feet of roof load, 20,000 pounds, down to a 9-inch diameter bronze "tiptoe" point. ... The local officials were anxious to cover their backs in case of failure. Refusing to accept the engineering calculations alone, the building department demanded the new column be tested with a load of 24,000 pounds-twice the full design load. (so, a test-column was build) Surrounded by a crowd of officials, reporters, clients, and Taliesin workers a crane dumped load after load of pig iron on the column. Wright stood by the column, unperturbed by the mounting tension, periodically tapping it with his cane. When the load finally reached the 24,000 pounds required, everyone sighed with relief. But Wright insisted they keep going and see how far it could go before the point of destruction. By late afternoon there was no more room to add any pig iron. At 60 tons, it was carrying FIVE TIMES THE TEST REQUIREMENTS. ^^^^ >> That's engineering achievement ! A more complete version of the text is avaliable in the Zip-file as "mush.txt". The skylights between the columns consists in many little glass tubes. The furniture is based on original furniture from Wright. My work also consisted in giving some ambiance to the thing, so I added some big green and red mushrooms, along with deep forest lightning (dark ground, clear sky). DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Everything you see is CSG; columns are cylinders and cones, mushrooms are lathes,... Glass tubes are "really" glass, with refraction. The hard thing was to find enough documentation about how the thing is constructed. Setting the atmosphere right was not difficult, but took a long time; you know, atmosphere+glass is quite CPU-eating. When we'll have that Cray, I'd like to try with added area-lights, radiosity, and focal-blur...