TITLE: Atlantian Shrine
NAME: Peter Houston
COUNTRY: England
EMAIL: houston.graphics@iname.com
WEBPAGE: http://freespace.virgin.net/peter.houston/
TOPIC: Imaginary World
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: atlanti1.jpg
RENDERER USED: 

        POV-Ray 3.1 for Windows


TOOLS USED: 

        Poser                  - Merfolk
        Helixr                 - Shells
        sPatch                 - Boat, Diver and Fish, Manta Ray, 
                                 Crab and Bottle
        Photoshop              - Height Field PNG, TGA to JPG Conversion,
                                 Image Maps
        AutoCAD LT             - Editing DXF's
        3DWin                  - DXF to POV Conversion
        Includes : Grass.inc   - Plant Life
                   Chain11.inc - Chains and Divers air line.
                   

RENDER TIME: 

          22 Hours 45 Mins 31 Sec


HARDWARE USED: 

        P133 w/ 128Mb Ram


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


"... and there it was, the source of the strange ocean lights, a shrine to
some unfathonable aquatic deity, and worhiping there creatures neither man nor
fish.  I dared to move closer but my bell suit resticted my movement.
Then they saw me, a look of anger crossed there man/fish faces and fear filled
my heart, there movements were as swift as dolphins, how was I to survive 
this...."



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


This is my first real POV-Ray scene, not including the tutorials in the
Docs.  I came across POV about mid December last year, and after playing
with the examples and looking at the IRTC entries, I decided to set
myself a challenge and enter the next round, whatever the subject.

It was playing about with Poser a couple of months earlier and Helixr
that prompted the idea of Atlantis, so I modelled the Merfolk first just
to see if I could make them look half convincing.

I started off in POV by creating a home for my Merfolk, the ring of columns
are just CSG's, and capped I them off with Helixr Shells.

I used a hollow plane with caustics for the sea level, and added a dark
blue fog to represent the water.

Photshops 'Clouds' filter was used for the seafloor height field, which
was then tiled.

The Altar is basically three Helixr shells and a network of Tori,
The sphere at the centre made of Tori was acheived with the help of Stephen 
Lavedas, who worked out the math, thanks Steve.

The plant life was generated using a modified version of Shiro Nakayama's
grass.inc, the chains and mirrors were added thanks to Rob Antonishen's
Chain11.inc.

I thought about downloading some free objects from the net, but decided
I'd have a go at modelling them myself using Mike Clifton's sPatch, after 
a week of frustration I finally got the hang of it and the Boat was the 
result, after that sPatch become easier so I went about modelling the Diver,
which I am quite pleased with.  I then modelled the clownfish, crab, 
manta ray, and finally the message and bottle.

Now it was time to work on the Merfolk, I imported the DXF's into AutoCAD LT,
and chopped them into two halves, so I could texture them easier, I also 
imported in a Trident and Crown (sPatch Models) for the MerKing, so I could 
line them up properly. I moved all the parts to different layers, then these 
were converted to .inc files using 3DWin, with each layer becoming a seperate 
object.

A clear sphere with interior media was placed in the middle of the
construction, with five cylindrical lights added to the centre of the Altar, and

the render time went through the roof :)

Peter H.