TITLE: Demise of the Red Fighter Pilot NAME: Johannes Eriksson COUNTRY: Finland EMAIL: joheriks@abo.fi TOPIC: Mythology COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: jwebaron.jpg ZIPFILE: jwebaron.zip RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.5 TOOLS USED: Moray 3.3, Rhinoceras 3.0, gimp, 3DS Max 5, World Machine, Python RENDER TIME: 19 minutes 14.0 seconds HARDWARE USED: Athlon XP 1700 IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A bit of World War I combat aviation history here in order to explain the connection to the subject "mythology". This IRTC entry is my interpretation of April 21, 1918 and the last moments in the life of Rittmeister Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, the famous "Red Baron". He died from a wound inflicted by a single bullet on that ominous day. The kill was originally attributed to Capt. Roy Brown, a Canadian pilot in the Royal Flying Corps flying a Sopwith Camel, and this is probably what most people remember. However, most evidence seem to indicate that it was Australian ground forces who fired the fatal shot (von Richthofen had chased a novice pilot by the name of Wilfred May deep into allied territory when he was killed). So in that sense Brown's victory can be considered a "myth" at least to some degree. "Mythology" also deals with legends, and von Richthofen was truly a legend. Officially credited with 80 confirmed kills and probably more than 100 in reality, he was the Ace of Aces of World War I and is the most famous combat aviator in history. Together with Oswald Boelcke, the father of aerial fighter tactics, he flew in Jasta 2 which was one of Germany's first offensive combat aircraft patrols. He later founded Jasta 11 and his famous flying circus, whose members painted the tails of their fighters the scarlet color of their leader's Fokker triplane. The bright red Fokker DR-I aircraft that instilled fear in allied pilots and gave birth to many legends in its time is still the most well-known and recognizable combat aircraft. In the scene von Richthofen is deep within allied territory at low altitude. He is being attacked from behind by Capt. Brown who is swooping down on him. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Scene was composed and textured in Moray 3.3, rendered in POV-Ray 3.5. The Fokker DR-I and Sopwith camel were modeled in Rhino and exported as UDO files. The UDO files were then imported and textured in Moray. Modeling the planes was the most time-consuming part in making the scene. I looked for three-view drawings of the DR-I and Camel on the net and also scanned some I found in the manual from the old MS-DOS game Red Baron! It took quite a lot of time to model especially the DR-I as I do not have much experience with modeling aircraft. The twin Spandau machine guns and von Richthofen's head were also modeled in Rhino. The ruins were created in 3DS max. The heightfield used for ground was generated by World Machine. To arborate the ground with trees I hacked together a custom Python program just for this scene (it is included in the source). The program reads the heightfield and places out billboards (i.e. pictures mapped on very thin cubes, rotated so that they face the camera) on the correct height. The tree pictures are POV-rendered from scenes generated by my own implementation of the Weber-Penn tree generation algorithm. More information about the algorithm can be found in this paper: http://www.cs.duke.edu/education/courses/fall02/cps124/resources/p119-weber.pdf For those interested in programs using the algorithm I recommend Wolfram Diestel's Arbaro rather than my own program (which is unfinished and rather hackish). Arbaro's webpage is at: http://arbaro.sourceforge.net/ Image maps for the ground, wings, fuselage, flying bullets and machine gun flames were drawn in the Gimp. The rotating propeller and engine were modelled and animated in 3D Studio Max and rendered with motion blur to a bitmap. Other textures are procedural textures generated by POV-Ray.