TITLE: Aliens with Water.
NAME: Michael Ashelby
COUNTRY: England - UK
EMAIL: mash@nortel.ca
TOPIC: Water
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: alienma.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray v3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    None.

RENDER TIME: 
    10h 43m 33s

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium II 300, 96 mb, 21inch Monitor/8mb Graphics. Nice little
machine. Not mine though!

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

Two Aliens Study various aspects of water. One reaches tentatively to a glass of
water, as
the other studies a fish from a bowl of water.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


Anyway, a few things about the image:

The thing that took me the largest amount of time to create were the aliens,
which are
entirely modeled by hand out of blobs. As such they are completely poseable, and
could be
animated if I had the time. The artifact of this is that in places the 'blob cut
out' problem can be seen. Also he can't clap, since at the moment his hands and
body are 
contained within the same blob.

Then there's the glass of water, which takes ages to render. I spent a fair
while getting 
the glass and water textures right, which I hope is reflected (no pun intended)
in the 
caustics on the table. The glass it's self is just a CSG of a cylinder with a 
super-whatsit taken from it, and the tori for smoothing the edges. The water
running down 
the side is a blob following a Brownian path, and the water on the table is just
a blob 
with the elements rotated around the y-axis and given random strength.

The table it's self is just a simple CSG, as are the fish and fishbowl.

I 'bumped' pretty much everything to loose that smooth feel you often get in CG

The whole thing is lit with 5 or so lights, and a little focal blur to add depth
of field.

Hope you like it. Feel free to criticise, but understand this image has been
kept simple 
for a) effect, I wasn't aiming for an over complicated, photo real effect and b)
due to 
severe lack of time. I only worked on this image for a total of about 15 of 20
hrs over 
the 2 months, and working by hand that_s not long.

Sorry for the lack of code. I'll send it to you if you want it.