TITLE: Escher Perpetual Waterfall
NAME: B. Wilkins
COUNTRY: England
EMAIL: cj@argonet.co.uk
TOPIC: Water
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: bw1098.jpg
ZIPFILE: bw1098.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV Ray 3.02

TOOLS USED: 


RENDER TIME: 
    1hr 3mins 800x600 , AA 0.3

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 166 MHz - 32Mb RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

An Escher style waterfall, placed in a pond next to a mountain side.
Note that the water always drops down until it finally drops back to the
beginning,
and that one set of fish is always jumping up, while the other fish always jump
down.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

Initially I started by having the lengths of each side the same, but soon
realised this
was never going to work and so ended up using a 3,4,5,6 system. The first step
is at <0,0,0>,
after that each step is down (there are no up steps !), all the steps are then
rotated as a
single object and finally a suitable camera angle had to be found to make the
illusion of the
water always dropping down work. The water roll off each step is a simple
textured cylinder.
Next came the fish which are a set of scaled spheres in a while loop, some cone
fins, torus lips
and disc eyes. The whole thing has a multi-layered texture made up of spots,
gradient Y's and
an iridescent finish.
Walls are just blocks with a crackle texture and the columns are just cylinders
with a similar
texture,but torus strips taken out to look like individual blocks.
The mountain is a heightfield with another multi-layer texture, this one gray in
the Y, spotted
so that it looks less evenly grained and a thin quartz-band at the bottom. Note
also that there
is a green line near the waters edge which is supposed to be moss-lichen.
The reeds at the back are made up of strips of spheres, with a couple of while
loops trying to
position them semi-randomly, and the lily pads at the front are just scaled
spheres again with
while loops for positioning.
The water in pond is just a plane which reflects both the mountain and clouds in
the sky.
Add in a few extra lily pads, an escaped fish and some moss hanging off the
sides of the stone
walls and thats it !