TITLE: Inorganic Carbon
NAME: MaryAnn Mandell
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: Povmax@aol.com
TOPIC: Elements
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: icarbon.jpg
ZIPFILE: icarbon.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV 3.0

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray, Orb-Cyl, Helixir and PSP5 for the heightfield and jpg
conversion.

RENDER TIME: 
    about 38 hrs I used adaptive supersampling with aa .3 to get rid of
the jagged edges.

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium II

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


For some reason the first thing that jumped into my mind when I saw the topic
was diamonds. After thinking about it meant inorganic carbon. I did some
research on the web and found that on earth, inorganic carbon is found as lamp
black or soot, charcoal and burned organic matter, diamonds, graphite and
fullerene. Diamonds have been found in meteorites and carbon has been found in
space. 

Fullerene was only recently discovered; first mathematically in the late 1980s
and then visually on the electron microscope in the early 1990s. Because its
structure is similar to the geodesic domes designed by Buckmeister Fuller, it
was named fullerene after him and the structure is called a buckyball. It does
appear naturally.

Once I had decided to do a scene using inorganic carbon, I knew that it would
have to a surrealist image because I could not see any other way of combining
such disparate objects. 

I choose to show lamp black or soot created by a hurricane lamp, graphite using
a mechanical pencil and a lead holder, a diamond necklace and lumps of
charcoal. Because fullerene is so rare and is not visible to the naked eye, I
had to use one of its crystalline structures to depict it. 

In order to show all of this, I decided that relative scale of the various
objects had to be irrelevant and that it could not be considered it their
placement.

My vision was to place these objects in a stark environment, devoid organic
elements except those needed to depict the objects themselves. I also wanted
very harsh lighting. In order to show that most of these forms were created by
geologic forces I wanted an ash volcano churning away. Artistically, I used the
small pieces of charcoal and the crystalline structures of graphite and
diamonds to create movement around the scene. 

I want to thank the POV folks, esp. Mike Hough, on AOL for their help and
encouragement.

Note: according to my research, graphite has a hexagonal crystalline structure.
Diamonds are in the isometric system and have been found in many of its
subtypes as well as cubic; I choose to use the cubic structure.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


I used Moray to create the objects. Except for the brass and chrome textures,
the rest of the textures are origional and were made using Moray's texture.

The lumps of coal were created using Orb-Cyl. There were differenced with cubes
to eliminate some of the triangles and to give them a more irregular outline.
POV gave warnings about it but did it anyway. They have a unique texture using
a color map and a normal.

The mountains are a heightfield that have been textured with a texture map so
that it looks like ash from the volcano has fallen on it and yet blends with
the ground.

The volcano is a halo in an enormous flattened sphere so that it appears to
infuse the clouds and sky with ash.

I choose to use a mechanical pencil to illustrate graphite because I thought it
would be more fun to make than a wooden one. The spring inside was created
using Helixir and textured with a chrome texture. The pencil is a transparent
blue with a spiral normal that has six arms echoing the hexagonal crystal
structure of graphite. The other parts of the pencil are done using csg. The
mechanical pencil looks just like the one I went out and bought just to make
sure I got it right. 

So does the container for extra leads. It is make using csg with color maps to
give the texture. The little 2 is also make from differencing 
a torus, a cube and cylinders with two other cylinders so it would curve around
the tube that holds the lead.

To make the buckyballs or fullerene, I found a web site in Japan and used the
information there and a lot of trial and error to get the angles right to
create a buckyball out of spheres and cylinders. I also used spheres and
cylinders to make the other crystal structures.

The diamonds were made using a superquartic "double pillow", which was scaled to
be very thin, for each of the 57 facets. I used the information for making a
brilliant cut diamond I found on the web for placing the facets. Then with a
little differencing and merging and an ior of 2.47 I got a nice diamond that
actually had a little fire and flash to it. However, when I used aa to get rid
of the jagged edges in the rest of the scene, most of the fire was lost. What I
ended up having to do was add some iridescence to the texture. As a matter of
fact I had to use three different amounts and thicknesses depending on the size
and position of the diamonds. I even played around with the iridescent wave
lengths but settled on the default.

I got out one of the many hurricane lamps we keep here in S. Florida so I could
observe it burn inorder to create one for this scene. The base was made from a
rotational sweep and the other metal parts from tori, cylinders, spheres and
cones. All have a brass metal texture. The chimney consists of an outer
rotational sweep that has a texture map that makes it look very sooty in the
proportions that my real lamp chimney got sooty. I had to use two containers
for the halos because the smoke halos did something to the fire halos to make
them turn black. The fire halos are in a sphere. When I used a second sphere
for the smoke halos the fire was ok but it ruined the soot texture on the
chimney. After much aggravation, I copied the rotational sweep of the chimney
and scaled it slightly smaller and put the smoke halos in there. It looks
great!