TITLE: Sydney Opera House
NAME: David Morgan-Mar
COUNTRY: Australia
EMAIL: mar@physics.usyd.edu.au
WEBPAGE: http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~mar/povray/
TOPIC: Landmarks
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: dmopera.jpg
ZIPFILE: dmopera.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1

TOOLS USED: 

  Paint Shop Pro 5.01 (jpeg conversion)
  Paper, pencil, ruler.
  Sydney Opera House - Jorn Utzon Collection, State Library of New
      South Wales.
  Sydney Opera House, Philip Drew, Phaidon Press 1995, 0-7148-3297-9
  Sydney Opera House, Michael Pomeroy Smith, Collins 1984, 0-00-217310-7
  Jorn Utzon, Francoise Fromonot, Gingko Press 1998, 3-927258-72-5
  Sydney Opera House Glass Walls, Harry Sowden, National Libray of
      Australia, 0-9598832-0-7

RENDER TIME: 
    ????????????

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium II 350MHz, 64MB


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Opened in 1973, the Sydney Opera House is one of the most instantly
recognisable buildings in the world. Its dominant location on Sydney
Harbour echoes its dominance as a centre of excellence in the
performing arts and as a symbol of Australia to the world. The first
and so far only man-made object to receive a nomination for World
Heritage listing, the Opera House is a cultural, national, historic
and architectural, as well as a merely geographical, landmark.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


This is clearly an unfinished image. :-(  I'm submitting it because
of encouragement to do so from the IRTC-L mailing list. :-)

I had the idea for this within 5 minutes of seeing the topic, since
I've always wanted to do this image since first starting with POV-Ray.
Unfortunately, I ran out of time in the second month of the round
because of a huge project at work and this really only has about half
the effort I wanted to put into it. 

I began with a trip to the library for research. Since there was lots
of information on the shells I started there instead of with the podium.
The shells are in reality sections of a spherical surface, so they
were pretty easy to model once I made some measurements off schematic
drawings.

I also made several trips to the Opera House (which is within walking
distance of my home) to take reference photos and measurements. I
don't know what people thought when they saw me measuring the height
of steps with a tape measure!

The most exciting thing was a visit to the State Library of New South
Wales, where I saw some of the original architectural drawings made
by the architect, Jorn Utzon, in the 1960s in Denmark. There are over
1000 drawings in the collection. I had copies made of two of the
elevations so I could take detailed measurements.

With all this reference material, I modelled the podium (the beige
platform) down to the last individual step (338 exterior steps). So
the podium is beautiful, while the rest of the building remains
unfinished. :-(  The glass is exactly the right thickness, though.

If I'd had the time to finish this off as I wanted, I would have
added all the remaining walls (you can still see right through the
gaps between the shells!), glasswork and a height field for the piece
of land on which the building sits, rather than the unreal endless
horizon of water. The textures are pretty basic at the moment - they
definitely need work. Then it needs some other buildings and trees in
the background. Finally some little details like lamp posts,
railings, maybe some people walking around, and a yacht or two in the
foreground. Maybe one day I'll finish this off properly...

I have a much more detailed history of how this image developed over
the two months on my web page (URL given above).