TITLE: Birth
NAME: Simon de Vet
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: sdevet@istar.ca
WEBPAGE: http://home.istar.ca/~sdevet
TOPIC: Nature
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: littledi.jpg
ZIPFILE: littledi.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray

TOOLS USED: 
    sPatch, Moray, Povray, HF-Lab

RENDER TIME: 
    About 2.5 hours (I keep forgetting to check. Sorry.)

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 266mhz

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

A baby dinosaur is the first to hatch from a clutch of eggs layed in the sand.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

This competition was quite an adventure. :)

I spent the first month working on no less than 5 different images, none of
which lasted more than a couple days. None worked, and I was getting
desperate.

I was leafing through a National Geographic, and came across a picture of an
Aggentinosaurus, and was impressed by it's look of total stupidity. I decided,
on a whim, to try to make it, not rhinking I would ever succeed.
My attempts are chronicled at http://home.istar.ca/~sdevet/model.htm

This head was of an adult dino, but I could not thin how to put it inot a nice
scene, especially considering I had about 2 weeks left, and no body. How to
hide the body, I thought. Then BINGO! Egg. A dino is born.
This progressed well, but I had about 4 days left, and i had graduations, and a
new computer to worry about. Whee. Luckily, the new computer was a blessing. It
allowed me to try something new, Focal Blur, which I think really makes the
image.

The dino is made entitrely in sPatch, and has a really complex mouth and teeth,
which is not apparant in the image. My website has good images of them, though.
The sand is a simple texture applied to a heightfield, I accidentaly deleted
with one day left, and had to regenerate, with HF-Lab. Argh! The eggs, broken,
whole, and yolk are all simple primitives. BTW, the egg shell pieces do fit
together to fill in the hole.

I need to thank Twyst, who's site inspired me, IndigoRenderer/InfernoRage, who
got me going with my failed ideas, and the whole team on #povray (IRC) for
endless tips and criticizms. I needed that!

This is my second competition etry, and IMHO, my best image ever! I am veeeery
proud of it, and I've learned to love both sPatch, and Pov's Focal Blur. Whee!

The zip-file includes the POv source (I turned the computer off by accident
while in moray, so no .mdl. Sorry) and a couple sPatch files, some of which
were used, others not. I don't want to give EVERYTHING away, afterall :)

Simon de Vet
aka: NotLikeTea