TITLE: The Truth Behind Stonehenge
NAME: Ryan Malinowsky
COUNTRY: United States
EMAIL: r_malinow@hotmail.com
WEBPAGE: N/A
TOPIC: Architecture
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: 2001sh.jpg
ZIPFILE: 2001sh.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    MegaPOV 1.0

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray V3.3 Build 7015

RENDER TIME: 
    42 sec.

HARDWARE USED: 
    PC 1.4 GHz AMD Athalon

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

This scene is a combination of Stonehenge and the monolith from 2001: A Space
Odyssey.  The whole idea behind it is that Stonehenge was actually built by the
apes from the book as a monument to the Monolith.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

I created this image mainly in Moray, then added a few things in by hand in
MegaPOV.

The scene is pretty simple, consisting almost entirely of some cubes and a
heightfield.  

Stonehenge:
-----------
The stones that make up Stonehenge are cubes that have been scaled, rotated, and
translated into position, then grouped together into a CSG.  The reason I did
this is because when I applied a texture (which is a normalized gray pigment)
to the stones, it appeared different on each of the stones, and it also saved
me the trouble of having to texture each piece individually.  I should note
here that the Stonehenge I created is not an accurate reproduction of the
original.  The real Stonehenge has many more stones, and they are all different
sizes, and are in different positions than the ones I created.

Monolith:
---------
As mentioned above, the Monolith from the book (and movie) "2001: A space
Odyssey" is situated in the center of Stonehenge.  The monolith, like the
stones that make up the rest of the scene, is just a cube.  The texture on the
Monolith is just a completely black pigment (the blackest thing I knew how to
make).

Ground:
-------
The ground was created by using a heightfield.  I created the image used by the
heightfield in Photoshop.  The texture on the ground is a blend of browns and
greens to give the appearance of dirt mixed in with grass.  The black spots all
over the place are artifacts, but I thought they looked like a bunch of small
stones, so I left them alone.

Sky:
----
I made the sky using the Galaxy plug-in for PovRAY created by the great Chris
Colefax.  Included with the plug-in is an html help file that includes a
segment of code for creating a simple galaxy scene.  When I first used the
plug-in, I made that scene and noticed how much the nebulae in it looked like
clouds.  So when I created this scene, I added that segment of code in to
create the sky.

Sun:
----
I used the LensFXMFC plug-in for Moray 3.2 (also created by Chris Colefax) to
create the sun.  I used the predefined type "Sunset1".

Other Stuff:
------------
In order to make the Monolith show up against the dark sky, I added a distant
layer of ground fog to the scene to lighten up the lower portion of the sky. 
That allowed the Monolith to appear blacker than black.

I also created another layer of ground fog just at the base of the monolith to
add some interest to the ground.


That's about all there is to my scene.  It isn't as complicated as some (most)
other scenes, but I like the way it turned out.
  
I have also included a .zip file with the .pov file used to render the scene.