EMAIL: jl@artcom-gmbh.de NAME: Jochen Lippert TOPIC: Loneliness COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: A lighthouse keeper in the desert sun COUNTRY: Germany WEBPAGE: - RENDERER USED: Povray 3.5 TOOLS USED: Photoshop, for JPEG conversion RENDER TIME: 1 hours 13 minutes HARDWARE USED: AMD Athlon 800 MHz IMAGE DESCRIPTION: There is a song by the Sisters of Mercy with the line "A lighthouse keeper in the desert sun" in the lyrics. I like this idea, even though it surely is not meant literally: A lighthouse in the middle of the desert, no water to be seen around, and no ships, too, of course. A pretty senseless job for a lighthouse keeper, and a pretty lonely one for sure. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: I started with the lighthouse, which is completely made of "classic" CSG parts like cones, cylinders, spheres, tori etc. The wire on the roof, called "Blitzableiter" in German, no idea what it is called in English, was made with a sphere sweep object, which I just had to use. ;) I later decided to only show the top of the lighthouse, and to let the sun shine directly into the camera, which is why you can't see much detail, just a shadow-like outline. I made this decision because I wanted to keep the main "actor", the lighthouse keeper, as simple as possible. He is made out of non-textured CSG parts like cones and super-ellipsoids and is meant to be seen as an outline against the sunlight only. The landscape is made of isosurface objects, and the sun is a union of a sphere and a textured disc as halo. Most effort was put into the modelling of the lighthouse top, though it still doesn't look as complex as I would like. I added several "wires" and rivets, but it still looks a bit simplistic compared to real lighthouses. I was unable to make the "windows" of the lamp house out of "glass", too, because the lamp itself got too dark when I tried. So I just left them out completely. I guess the lighthouse keeper has done a great job on cleaning the glass, that's why you can barely see it. ;)