TITLE: Atlantis
NAME: Thomas Mathys
COUNTRY: Switzerland
EMAIL: mathys_aka_scratchy@bluewin.ch
WEBPAGE: http://fly.to/scratchy
TOPIC: Imaginary worlds
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: atlantis.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POVRay 3.01

TOOLS USED: 
    none (except a text editor, paper, pencil and a calculator)

RENDER TIME: 
    33 minutes and 8 seconds

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 90

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


This image might be a bit cheap, because I'm a beginner and still
exploring all the features of POVRay.

What I also can say to Atlantis : I'm not sure it's something imaginary...maybe
Atlantis did really exist...?


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


The ruins are nothing special, just CSG Objects containing boxes, prisms,
superquadrics and lathe objects, with a simple stone texture.

The terrain is more interesting. It consists of two height fields, one
for the rocks and one for the sand.
The maps for the height fields are also created with POVRay :

        1. Make a plane and position the camera in front of it.

        2. Select a pigment : agate, marble or granite for rocks,
           wrinkles or bozo for round hills. Add some turbulence
           and create a color map. You'll probably adjust it later

        3. Scale and translate the pigment until you get the desired map.

        4. Tune the turbulence and the color map until you get what you need.
           This is the color map I used to create the height map for the
           rocks :

           color_map {
                     0      0.3*White   //0 - 0.3 : Terrain is flat
                     0.3    0.3*White   //From here the rocks start to rise
                     1      White 
           }

Now you have a nice height map. With this way you can create almost every
terrain, and they will probably look better than terrains created with
terrain maker. (I think, the most terrains created with terrain maker
look too jaggy.)

Then I made the two height fields and tadah, you see the result.
For the rocks I didn't use a pigment, only a very light gray and
a normal map. For the sand (ok, it doesn't look like sand...) I used
a wrinkle pigment and scaled it down.

The water (yes, it should be water, since people say that Atlantis
is in the sea) is a simple constant fog.