TITLE: The Truth NAME: Charles Gordon COUNTRY: USA EMAIL: opus@value.net WEBPAGE: Still new to this... Not yet... TOPIC: Worship COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: thetruth.jpg ZIPFILE: thetruth.zip RENDERER USED: POV-RAY 3.1g TOOLS USED: MORAY 3.3, MS Paint (to create the image map for The Truth - the candy in the dish), MS Photo Editor to convert to JPG (90% compression) RENDER TIME: ~17 Minutes HARDWARE USED: HP OmniBook 900 w/P3 (?Mhz) Running Windows 2000. IMAGE DESCRIPTION: People worship many different things and in many different places. When that thing is a candy "so good that it is The Truth" then just the sound of it filling the bowl can summon the devote from all around. This is a sound that only Pavlov and his dog could appreciate. As with all things worshiped, there is a place of worship, a place where that one thing is focused upon. While there may be other things around, and the act of worship is as simple as enjoying The Truth, it happens in a place where little else is important, or noticed. Worship also tends to have devices used by the devote. These devices can be trinkets, cups, or even bowls. There can even be a certain reverence around these devices. In this case it is as much the presence of the bowl as The Truth within. The Truth can be, and means, many different things to many people. It can also be seen differently depending on interpretation. The truth is "for those who are full of deceit and lies, we offer salvation". Truth: a candy so fine that to refer to it by a name other than Truth constitutes blasphemy. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: First the idea... In the office that I work, there is just such a bowl of The Truth. The Truth is a candy that was deemed "so good that it is The Truth". While this was a joke at the time, the idea was embraced by many people all through the office. Just the sound of an empty Truth bowl being filled has the effect of making people stand up, take notice, and come enjoy fresh Truth. This struck me as being a type of worship, be it known or not. Thus when the topic of Worship was revealed, it was a simple connection. I wanted to keep this simple, and the idea of a office area seen with very few business tools was appealing. Second the how... The Dish is a Rotational Sweep modeled after a dish actually used in my office. The Truth in the bowl is a squashed sphere with an image map. I choose to use the image map to simulate a letter printed on the candy (I could not figure out how to model it other wise - the letter kept sticking up at the edges). The Desk came next, it is a model of the desks in the office that I did from memory while on vacation. As such it is not exactly the same. The reflective rounded end is not even a part of the desk at work (goes to show that some details are unimportant while enjoying The Truth). The sign was inspired by the design of name signs at a previous job. The lamp came from trying to figure out how to do IK in Moray. It was needed to add some light, and it too was really simple, and quickly done (I wanted some close light on the subject). I tried to focus on simple objects, but I fear the light became the most worked on. I tended to model the objects individually, and then I put them together into the final picture. Rendering was done with a medium focal blur, directly from Moray 3.3, to PNG format. It was then compressed to JPG using MS Photo Editor.