TITLE: Australian Bushfire

NAME: Ian & Ethel MacKay
COUNTRY: Australia

EMAIL: ethelm@bigfoot.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.hermes.net.au/artwerx/

TOPIC: Elements
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: bushfire.jpg
ZIPFILE: bushfire.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.01


TOOLS USED: 
    Edit.com


RENDER TIME: 
    52 minutes 52 seconds


HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 200/64M RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


The subject "elements" suggested the traditional "earth, water, fire, air"; also
the more general idea that we are subject to the elements in the sense of
natural forces ie; storms, floods, droughts and of course bushfires or
wildfires. So this is a bushfire of the sort that we have in Australia.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


The original idea had much more foliage, some of it burning. However, the
computer "threw in the towel" several times until I had reduced the memory
requirements to what it considered manageable levels.
The flames are two partly transparent planes with Bozo colour_maps and light
sources in that area.
The dead trees are CSG objects; portions of a torus, sphere, cylinder.
The grass and leaves are while loops (thanks to previous help on while loops
from Jaime Vives Piqueres and Lorenzo Quintana).
The image is the result of a great deal of trial and error, mostly the latter.
It could just possibly have been better with more RAM, or maybe not!

POV file is included as bushfire.zip