TITLE: "A Study in Melting Points"
NAME: Greg M. Johnson
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: gregj56590@aol.com
WEBPAGE: http://members.xoom.com/gregjohn
TOPIC: Still Images
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: melting.jpg
ZIPFILE: melting.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.02 watcom32

TOOLS USED: 
    Povray, CorelDraw7, Poser2, CrossRoads 3D

RENDER TIME: 
    10h 4m 59s

HARDWARE USED: 
    Aptiva C9E, 200 MHz Pentium

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

"A team of metallic superheroes burst into the lair of the evil Dr. Ruby.
Whether and how they survive will depend on the physical properties of the
elements in their composition."
This image is inspired in part by the old Metal Men comic books, where each
superhero would explain his defeat or victory in battle with campy little
science lesson. Poor Tin, always getting melted!
This image is also inspired by the kinds of arguments that arise when materials
scientists from different disciplines get together. Much like sports fans
arguing over whether Mike Ditka could singlehandedly beat the 1972 NY Jets,
silly arguments arise between metallurgical and ceramic engineers. 
This image plays on several battles: good vs. evil, metals versus ceramics, and
expert (IMHO) use of blobs in excellent freeware vs. crappy output of canned
mediocre software. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

First, I greatly improved the "insect-like" figures that I used in my last IRTC
entry.  The figures are made up of blobs of hundreds of elements. The blobs are
cylinders (bones) and elongated spheres (muscles).  The tungsten character
represents a "normal" figure with the INC that I created.  Next I made two
figures which were melting into puddles, by adding flattened cylinders to the
blob.  Then I made a diffusion couple between copper and nickel, where I
inserted two different characters into the same blob statement.
Then, I used Poser 2 to create Dr. Ruby.  I am disappointed with this program,
as all bent joints end up looking like cracks in a ceramic mannequin.  I
exported it to DXF and used CrossRoads 3D to convert to POV. Crossroads doesn't
seem to get along with either Win95 OR Win98.
Then, I created a floor of ceramic tiles, with a while/end loop and a
quasi-random selection of colors. The finish is copied from an example in the
POV documentation.
The heat weapon control box is all POV CSG and the weapon heat lamp is a mere
lathed object. I TRIED time and again to make the heat beam visible via a halo,
atmosphere, or fog, but never got anything to work. As the documentation says,
it doesn't affect reflected light. A real laser wouldn't be visible in this
manner, anyway, you people!  The squares from the periodic table and the sign
on the heat weapon control box were composed in Corel Draw 7 and exported as
GIFs. I gave them an ambient of rgb 111 in order to get them to show up
brightly.  I ran across a 1966 Legion of SuperHeroes comic book where the
villain's weapon was labelled in a campy fashion and though this was a nice
touch. 
The TV images on the monitors are studies from my devleopment of my INC. Like
the periodic table squares, they shine by virtue of an ambient in the finish. 
Yeah, I know that the image would look better if I finished making the doorway
through which the metal men supposedly just burst through. But when you work
with a project for two months, you eventually have to just let it go...
The ZIP file includes, I hope, just enough files to show it's my original work. 
I still want to submit an animation with the type of character I have developed
here and want to hold on to my metal men just a few months longer.