TITLE: The Collectors
NAME: Tom Ryan
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: headhunter_tr_ca@yahoo.com
WEBPAGE: Maybe by the next time I enter.

TOPIC: Fantasy and Mystic
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: collectr.jpg
ZIPFILE: collectr.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1g


TOOLS USED: 
    PhotoShop 5.5 (for image maps), Poser 4, WCVT2POV, Spatch


RENDER TIME: 
    1h 36m 48s in addition to 1m 20s parsing time.


HARDWARE USED: 
    PIII 900, 256 Mb RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep

             (William Butler Yeats)

Faeries, known for their magical nature as well as their mischievousness gather
the materials that they need for something. A spell, perhaps? The poor human
whose misfortune has created this winfall for the faeries has fled for help,
leaving the workers time to finish the job. He can never know that they have
been there. He will not even wonder if they are simply benefactors or if they
may have had a hand in creating the situation...


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


This is my first entry in the IRTC. The idea came to me when I (more or less)
simultaneously started playing around with "looks_like" and saw the Peter Pan
cartoon with my son. I made a figure in Poser, converted it to .inc format with
WCVT2POV, assigned a light source to it, made some wings, and a race was born.

The scene was somewhat unplanned. It was only three weeks before the deadline
that I came up with a way to connect the two themes...the faeries and the
shaving accident. There is no technical magic here...no media, no radiosity...I
just played ('til the last second) with area lights, indirect lighting, camera
angles and simple textures until I got what you see. By the way, if the .jpeg
is really dark, may I suggest turning up the brightness on your monitor. While
that may seem stupidly obvious, I noticed a big difference between my computer
at home and that at work.

The shaving cream in the cup and on the blade as well as the ladel handle, the
pants thrown over the chair and the banners on the staff were made with sPatch.
The wing patterns, the smear on the doorframe and bannister and the picture
hanging on the wall (my mother, actually - she claims she was 11 years old at
the time, but my feelings on the validity of that claim are mixed and beyond
the scope of this document) are image maps made with PhotoShop 5.5. The staff
is an afterthought - specifically after reading "The IRTC reserves the right to
reject and remove any submission, at any time, for any reason" - I thought I'd
better cover up the naughty bits on the closest one - just in case.

Oh yeah, the moon is a "looks_like" light with a spotlight pointed at it. I
found that the light source was too small to make the whole thing glow properly
so I had to light it externally, too. Actually, that's more realistic, anyway,
isn't it? 

The radiator, wood floor and mirror frame could be, and likely will be one day,
macros. Now they're just #includes.

My apologies for not sending any code. My .zip file was continuously and
mysteriously (to me, anyway) rejected.