TITLE: rockpool
NAME: Jim Charter
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: jrcsurvey@aol.com
WEBPAGE: members.aol.com/jrcsurvey
TOPIC: Warfare
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: rockpool.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Clothray

TOOLS USED: 
    PSP to compress

RENDER TIME: 
    1 h

HARDWARE USED: 
    Athlon 650

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

This derives from a scene in the novel by Lawrence Durrell, "The Alexandria
Quartet".  In the novel, two lovers, seeking solitude, discover a beautiful
"rock pool" on a small deserted island.  But soon they must enjoy its beauty in
the presence of the shrouded forms of seven navy men which, once committed to
the deep, have drifted on the tide to the mouth of the pool.  The figures are
"covered by a dense silver dew, like mercury". Durrell likens the pool to the
"nave of a cathedral"  in one line, and to an "amphitheater" in another.  I
based its shape on the logarithmic spiral of a sea shell.  I preserved the
"selenite plastic clay" bottom but while in the novel the rocks of the walls
suggest sculptures of dwarfs and goddesses, my walls seem to echo pictures of
ancient battles.  The cascade of spent shell casings comes from another scene
in the novel describing an aerial assault on a warship. 

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The scene is composed almost entirely of blobs.  The shrouded figures are
created with Chris Huff_s blob fill macro.  The patches of seaweed on the sea
floor are made with Gilles Tran_s grass macro.  The rock pool walls are
composed of blobs whose volume and color are controlled from  image maps using
eval_pigment().  The overall shape is controlled with splines.  A panel from
Uccello_s Battle of San Romano, and Micheangelo_s early relief  of battling
Centaurs are the image map sources.  The veil of seaweed covering the right
wall and the shell casings on the left  are placed with the trace() function.
Scattering and absorption media color the water.  Water surface is a plane with
a bumps normal.  Chris Colefax_s spline macro and John VanSickle_s Reorient
macro were used.