TITLE: Studying Julia

NAME: Ian Shumsky
COUNTRY: UK

EMAIL: ianshumsky@hotmail.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Horizon/4724

TOPIC: First Encounter
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: isfirste.jpg
ZIPFILE: isfirste.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1 for Windows


TOOLS USED: 
    Paint Shop Pro 5, PhotoShop 4


RENDER TIME: 
    7h 30m


HARDWARE USED: 
    PII, 300 MHz, 64Meg



IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


NOTE: This image uses a lot of colours! To view the image without
banding on the mug and lamp, you will need to display in 24-bit true
colour.

After the topic was announced for this round I was a bit short on
ideas, so I downloaded POV 3.1 hoping for some inspiration. I paged
through the docs and decided I'd try rendering a julia set, as it was
something I'd never traced in POV 3.0. I tapped in the commands from
the docs and saw an amazing shape. It was my *first encounter* with
such a mathematical monster and my *first encounter* of POV 3.1. Wow -
tenuous inspiration!

I've tried to reflect both of these firsts in the image by making the
julia set the centre of the image and utilising some of the new
features of POV, such as radiosity.

This is my second entry in the IRTC, and once again I ran out of time.
Given those extra few hours, I would have tried to give a more
interesting wall and desk top, less 'red' lamp and pencils and a more
twisting flex for the lamp.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


Almost everything was created from scratch for this entry. The only
exceptions were the basic pencil and the Newton's Cradle. The majority
of the other objects (desk, desk lamp, mug, mat, pencil holder and
julia stand) are all reasonably straight forward CSG. All of the
objects were produced by hand using plain paper, a ruler, a pen and a
lot of trail and error.

The sketch of the julia set was produced by rendering a grey julia set
on a white background, then applying the chalk and charcoal artistic
filter from PhotoShop 4. The image on the mug is a simple image placed
twice on a pi:1 ratio canvas. The zip file contains both images at a
reduced resolution.

A 'crackle' surface normal was used to give the rough wall texture. I
think it gives a nice surface to slightly diffuse the shadows.

There are 2 lights in the scene. The first is a 60% white shadowless
light in the centre of the room. This is used to provide the general
illumination for the image. The second light, a slightly yellow area
light, is located within the lamp and illuminates the desk objects.
Radiosity was also used on the final render.

The only really difficult in the image was getting the pencils to look
correct when they were placed in the holder. As my maths isn't up to
much, I first calculated the angle from the centre of the base of each
holder to the lip, then adjusted the height of the holder based on the
angle and the width of the pencil object. Hopefully the result is that
they don_t look too much like they are floating!