TITLE: My Japan
NAME: Jeffrey D. Shaffer
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: oyume@gold.ocn.ne.jp
WEBPAGE: http://www.pitt.edu/~oyume
TOPIC: Imaginary Worlds
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION
JPGFILE: myjapan.jpg
ZIPFILE: myjapan.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1a

TOOLS USED: 

        - MORAY 3.0:
            - modeling
        - PhotoStudio 2.0: 
            - create source files for heightfields
            - convert to JPG
            - add text

RENDER TIME: 
    about one hour

HARDWARE USED: 
    Intel 233MMX


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

        I moved to Japan last July from the East Coast of the US to     teach
English in a small village called Soni. Soni is at the     outskirts of Nara
Prefecture which is in the middle of Japan's     main Island. I'm about 2 hrs
from Osaka.
        I was working on a computer movie about my village when it     struck me
what MY imaginary world really is -- JAPAN! I have     worked for about 1 year
to be able to move to Japan, not     including all the time spent in college
studying the language.     Being here is like being in a dream and therefore,
my imaginary     world. Japan, MINE!
        The image basically shows japan with my Prefecture     highlighted (but
it's a little small!) So there's also a larger     version of my prefecture
made of glass on the right. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


        The hardest part about this image was making the the maps of     Japan
and Nara Prefecture. I actually took digital pictures of     maps I already had
(Japan came from my College Japanese book and     Nara came from the "Nara
Living Guide" someone gave me when I     1st came here.)
        After I took the pictures, I had to paste them all together     (each
map was made from 3 pictures.) Then I hand edited them to     clean up the
lines and mistakes, then ran them through several     changes in Contrast and
brightness. And finally I ran tem     through a threshold filter which made
them flat B&W.
        Now I had straight B&W files, I could import them into a     heightfield
in Moray, where the rest involved placing the pieces     together and being
patient while the rendered kept track of     three 1000X1000 pixel TGA
imagemaps.
        All the files are included in the ZIP. Feel free to use any     of them,
including the maps. (I spent about 1 1/2 hrs on each     map!)