TITLE: Warm bear amidst cold robots
NAME: Peter Murray
COUNTRY: England
EMAIL: peter@table76.demon.co.uk
WEBPAGE: http://www.table76.demon.co.uk/POV/
TOPIC: Contrast
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: pdmmetal.jpg
ZIPFILE: pdmmetal.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1g.r1 Macintosh PPC

TOOLS USED: 
    Just pencil and paper, I think.

RENDER TIME: 
    Total Time 2 hours 51 minutes 5.0 seconds (10265 seconds)
    Time For Parse:    0 hours  0 minutes   4.0 seconds (4 seconds)
    Time For Trace:    2 hours 51 minutes   1.0 seconds (10261 seconds)

HARDWARE USED: 
    Apple Macintosh G3 300MHz Desktop
DISCLAIMER: No teddy bears were abandoned in heartless surroundings in
    the rendering of this image.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    A lost bear finds he's about the only colourful
    thing in an expanse of cold greyscale metal.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

This doesn't have anything to do with the idea I originally had, but I was
watching Logan's Run, and there was this scene with Michael York shooting
at bits of the computer, and I was thinking about making a POV-Ray set that
looked cold and technical (I wasn't trying to copy the set from that film
though)...

... and then I thought about the contrast of having a teddy bear in the
middle of such a set, and it seemed like a good idea for this round; part
of the topic expansion said:
    Opposites or strongly differing elements united in a scene. Hot and
        cold, steel and flesh, black and white, rich and poor, natural and
        artificial, good and evil, Linux, Mac, and MS-Windows, winter, spring,
        summer, and fall. Any scene bringing together and highlighting
contrasts.
So my contrasts here are colour/greys, warm fur/cold metal, and also
the robots' pre-programmed busy activity contrasted with the lost bear's
confusion.

Longer description:
I started by playing with metallic textures, making lots of use of the
definitions in "metals.inc".  The crackle and gradient patterns have been
used in normal statements to detail the background, and gradient was also
used to make the horizontal lines I'd sketched on the vehicles.  The
brick pattern was used to make the floor (and ceiling) tiles.  Later
I overlaid dirt textures onto the metal objects.  Hopefully it's not
too obvious that the pattern of dirt is the same for each object... I
could have included a random rotation in the texture calls to fix that,
but decided to concentrate on more visible problems.

After that, I cut holes in the floor, put lights down there, and then
covered them over again.  I gave the covers a texture I used in the
"Great Engineering Achievements" round, which just overlays two gradients
at 90 degrees to each other, which are largely transparent.

The lights in the scene actually illuminate the scene.  The POV file does
include two lights that aren't part of the scene, but I've used variables
to turn those lights off for this rendering.

The bear had been in the scene all through the test renders, but wasn't
dressed up until after I'd used the same bear macro on a Christmas card
scene.  The clothing is based on the outfits the bears on the card are
wearing, but I've changed the hat, the jacket and sleeves, added a belt and
pockets, and changed the boots to shoes.  It looks as if he's standing
slightly under the surface, but I think it's actually an illusion caused
by the reflection.  The dark marks around his head are the text on the
background train, reflected in the floor.

It wasn't intentional, but one reaction has been that he looks like a
Mountie!

After the bear, I built a small robot "engine" and "carriages" and wrote a
train macro to link them up.  I made small changes to the shape of the robot
"engine" over the next few weeks, giving it a more rounded front instead of
the squared-off front it originally had.  I also added the credits for this
entry on the side.  The odd round "nose" on the "engine" is meant to be
a coupler, like the ones visible on the background train.

The cargo in the "carriages" is contained within some sort of containers
and I didn't put too much detail in them.

Then I added some overhead structure for the metallic set, with rails for
overhead cranes to run on.  The crane doesn't "work" in the way that many
of my macros do - I tend to make doors that can open and close, like the
door in the back, or trains of robots that can be straight or turning a
corner.  As there's only one crane in this scene, I don't need to make it
look slightly different from others.  It's not very visible anyway,
hiding up there at the top left.


It's only the 14th of December - I think this is the earliest I've ever
submitted an entry.  I'm moving out of this house in a few days, so had
to get this entry finished before then.