TITLE: The Dawn After War NAME: Jouni T. Heikniemi COUNTRY: Finland EMAIL: jouni@mikrobitti.fi WEBPAGE: http://www.mikrobitti.fi/~jth/ (Finnish, sorry) TOPIC: Ruins COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: jthdawar.jpg ZIPFILE: jthdawar.zip RENDERER USED: POVRay 3.1g (Win32) TOOLS USED: Terrain Maker 1.1, Moray 3.1 RENDER TIME: 1m 41s HARDWARE USED: Mobile Pentium II 400 MHz, 128 MB IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The Kingdom of Hauler, ruled by the legendary king Julius Ehrmann, had been under continuous threats from the southern Schrude Empire. One silent midsummer afternoon the border archipelago became a stage for a massacre more serious than ever. Schrudian warships sailed forth, blasting the coastal outpost of Sipan with full loads of cannonfire. The battle continued the whole evening, until darkness fell. The dawn broke the silence with birds' singing - and a ghastly sight, with dead men lying around the devastated outpost. Ok, so this is where we step in. Simply, it's a tribute to those wonderful Lego(tm) building blocks many of us spent our childhoods with. They are simply great, as any normal pounding or rending would not break them. Yea, castles would fall and gates shatter, but all in one-block units. And just to be built again, bigger and better than before. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: The inspiration struck me in the end of January after thinking through some different approaches to the Ruins topic. Rendering some Lego block stuff had been interesting since my acquisition of POVRay, so it wasn't that hard to select the path after all. I started with some basic modeling of those 4x2 Lego blocks. Most of the stuff after that was simply combining and reusing the prepared elements with some loops. Moray was used to model the lathe object for the cannon pipe, but otherwise the code is entirely hand-written. After the outpost was done, I realized that the deadline is tightening its grip, so I had to drop some of my ideas and went on to create the scenery with Terrain Maker. After couple of evenings of hasty work, I ended up with something I could live with, and thus decided to submit the work despite its incomplete parts. Thinking afterwards, a little more of time and right attitude would've made this one a lot better. Now it relies on its interpretation of the theme, which may or may not be enough for, say, TOP-20. Then again, IRTC just might not be about winning, and as it's my first submission candidate that got even this far, I'm just happy to have it out there. There you go! DISCLAIMER STUFF: LEGO Group wants me to have this one, so here goes: LEGO(R) is a trademark of LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this text, image or anything related thereto. None of the modelling is intended to be exactly accurate, and the image may not reflect the actual building possibilities with Lego blocks. The picture is intended to be a totally neutral representation of my personal visions, which are in no way connected with LEGO Group. ... Just blast the lawyers, will you?