TITLE: VIRTUAL VIRTUAL REALITY
NAME: Burkhard "Bugi" Goertz
COUNTRY: Germany
EMAIL: info@goertz-mediengestaltung.de
WEBPAGE: www.joboland.de
TOPIC: Architecture
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: bg_vvr.jpg
ZIPFILE: bg_vvr.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    PovRay 3.5

TOOLS USED: 
    PovRay Editor, Creative Studio 3d (same as MAXON Cinema4d 5),
         Wooden Building Blocks, Pen and Paper.


RENDER TIME: 
    approx. 6.5 h

HARDWARE USED: 
    Athlon 2000XP, 512 MB RAM
________________________________________________

LOGICAL INFO

JPEG-FILE:bg_vvr.jpg
Source: bg_vvr.pov (and some others...)
________________________________________________



IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

1. Today Architects uses computers a lot to visualize their ideas, but 
they're building models too. Since I'm not so good at creating complex 
architectural designs, mainly because I'm no architect and not experienced
enough,
I've decided to construct a architectural model.

2. To create a Raytracing-Image means creating Virtual Reality - just get all
this
colored pixels and make them look something totally different. 
It's similar to playing bricks in childhood - you take all those building 
blocks and build something totally different, some sort of virtual reality. 

I've called the image virtual virtual reality, because it illustrates 
virtually virtual reality (somehow weird, isn't it?)
________________________________________________


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

- I've played with my children's building blocks 
  (they're the same as in the images: 1 x 2 x 4 in or 1 x 2 x 2 in) 
  and evaluated what typical structures could be erected with them.

- I've scribbled a castle on paper. 

- In PovRay-Editor I've wrote some macros to build structures 
  (Wall, Wall with Door, Tower, round tower, Square, Roof, round roof).
  Also, I've created a height-field, apparently that from the
height-field-tutorial
  included in PovRay. (render hf_test.pov once to get the tga. Options: 640x480
+FT +A0.1 )

- In Creative Studio I've constructed a "3D Sketch" (c4d) 
  of my scribble, because I needed some WYSIWYG-Features to get 
  the placing of elements looking good. 

- After that I build the final scene with the coordinates from my 
  c4d-File in PovRay-Editor (manually), added lightning and a bunch of effects 
  to get the ambience right (Radiosity, media, focal blur). 

- PovRay did the rest, and I think it did a GREAT job!

- Oh, forgot to tell: I've gamma corrected the image in Photoshop, 
  since the original was to pale.

- The sources aren't very clean, but some comments are in the main file
(bg_vvr.pov), 
  however, the includes have mostly to be self-explanatory :-)

- Use the switch in the main-file (high_quality), to switch between fast and
quality rendering.

- Caution: you will get a bunch of warnings, I didn't correct this, because the
result wasn't touched.