TITLE: Altars of Ego
NAME: Marjorie Graterol
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: emediez@emediez.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.emediez.com
TOPIC: Worship
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: mg_altar.jpg
ZIPFILE: mg_altar.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray for windows v.3.1g


TOOLS USED: 

        sPatch
        Hamapatch
        AC3D
        Corel PhotoPaint (compression and signature)
        Crossroads (convert .dxf to .pov) 



RENDER TIME: 
    01h 03m 03s
           

HARDWARE USED: 
    Intel Pentium III 500MHz, 160MB


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

//
Weird and extremely interesting topic.  Altars of Ego was started as a way to
depict what we primarily worship and adore, ourselves. Seen as a powerful tool
to help us live, our Ego changes constantly, wearing different faces for
different values and reasons. In the way, changing "sets" of feelings, emotions
and actions will fall down to adopt new ones, in a superb exercise of freedom
of choice. Far from being a critique, it is rather a point of reflexion. Being
mere abstractions, we usually worship those thoughts from others that we do not
dare to question.

I could not find other way than to use symbols, and even so, I consider the
image incomplete and scarce. The "faces"  mentioned are the masks. The altar is
the structure, repetitive and weak, only appears to be strong in which we live
every moment of now. Clothes, object of affection of everybody one moment or
another, as well as the shoe. In many places a symbol of status, in others the
price of life itself, and still, a shoe. Few coins on the front, the link and
the gap. Two big mouths instead of the candles, the blah, blah as we speak to
others and to ourselves, in the belief we really believe what we think we
believe. The symbol right below the first floor is a personal token, a
remembrance of balance. The stairs can take you up, or down, to other realms
and more and more new masks and stuff, or to another higher thought, the
Highest thought. Or it could be the path to the soul. This image was a real
enjoyable task, thanks for this topic.
  

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


Scene
Inside a big hollow sphere, with layered textures roughly delivered. It is
scaled so the camera caughts just a glimpse of it. It is a real disaster if the
camera moves upwards. Two planes, one of them kind of murky and the one on top
Gray and with a transmit value. 

Lights are four, two point_lights, one spotlight and an ambient_light. 

Objects
The structure or platform was modeled in AC3D and exported as POV. It is
repeated four times, one of them almost under the planes, to use the top as
"steps" to reach the others.

There is only one mask, repeated. It was modeled in sPatch. I finally decided to
use only one texture for them, because it wasn't necessary to differentiate
them. Each of them is alike and different by means of lights, I think. 

Modeled in sPatch: Shoe, mask, clothes and the candle holder.
Modeled in Hamapatch: Stairs, mouths, the symbol near the mask to the right.   

Coins are image_maps on top of cylinders and then intersected. Images come from
Corel object/images. Just two cents, literally. 

It was rendered using Radiosity. Render settings are commented at the end of the
source file (mg_altar.pov). 

Except for the coins, all textures are procedural. They are referenced in the
.inc file included in the source (ws_tex.inc). 
        

CREDITS
sPatch Copyright 1996-1998 by Mike Clifton.
Hamapatch v2.1
Corel Photopaint 8.0 - JPG Compression (10%), signature and Digimarc number.
AC3D v3.0 Andy Colebourne
Crossroads(c) 1998 Keith Rule -Converter
Texture Viewer v 2.2 _1998-1999 Friedemann Schmidt