TITLE: Great Wall of China NAME: James A. Coons COUNTRY: United States EMAIL: jacoons@ameritech.net WEBPAGE: none FILE NAME: GWC-72.POV JPGFILE: GWC-72.JPG ZIPFILE: GWC-72.ZIP TOPIC: Epic Proportions COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: gwc_72.jpg ZIPFILE: gwc_72.zip RENDERER USED: PovRay 3.5 (Windows) TOOLS USED: ThumbsPlus (Cerius) Image processing and resizing. PaintBrush (Microsoft): Image processing and adding Title. QEDIT (Semware) : Global changes, macros, etc. RENDER TIME: 47 minutes HARDWARE USED: Intel Pentium 600 Mhz, 65M Ram, Windows Operating System. DATE STARTED: 05/21/2004 DATE FINISHED: 06/30/2004 IMAGE DESCRIPTION: John and Jane are tourists, taking a tour of the Great Wall of China. Along its winding paths, they take pictures as they go. They have been happily staying with the tour and sticking to the approved paths and areas. However, after several hours, they quickly become bored and leave the group. They wander into the "forbidden" areas beyond the guard rails and fences. In the distance, they can see a broken section of the wall and decide to investigate. In a short while, it begins getting dark. Jane trips over something in the dark, but doesn't know what it is. As they come closer to the broken section, they realize that something is wrong. As they look inside the gap, they see Play-Doh, Crayons and other toys, but they are HUGE! Jane had tripped over a giant crayon! They quickly realize that the Great Wall is just a play thing designed by some giant child, absent at the moment, thank goodness! They start taking pictures of this incredible sight, because who would believe them? Behind them, something twig snaps and a large shadow falls over them ... How This Image Was Created: Terrain: The Mountains and attached Ground was created using a Height_Field with realistic images and a slope-style. Sky: The Sky is a cloud Image mapped onto a sphere using "Creative Pigment Blending", as described below. By blending and subtracting variations of the original image, I stumbled onto a amazingly complex sky textures. By setting the "Sky_Angry" parameter in the rendering, the sky is given more contrast and appears more "angry". A more realistic result was obtained by using a large "squashed" sphere instead of a "Sky Plane". Walls: The Wall is an elongated box, textured with a maniplated photo of the actual Wall of China I found at Google.Com. I tried doing it in two pieces, but then decided do a single wall and then remove the parts I didn't want. I wanted to use a Procedural Height Field (with a Function) to create realistic bricks, but decided against it because it increased the rendering time too much and I couldn't get it to look right. I had to use a copy of the Wall with a rotated texture to get the bricks on the top of the Wall to work properly. Gate and Door. The Gate is a Height_Field with the same texture as the Wall. It contains a Door, also a Height_Field, which is also the same texture as the Wall. Ray-Doh Container: The Ray-Doh container is a decorated cylinder with a Height_Field for the Ray-Doh Ball. Ray-Doh Ball: The ball of Wall-Colored Ray-Doh is a Height_Field with a variatino of the Pigment used for the Wall. Crayons: The Ray-Ola Crayons are created with a macro, using cylinders with a Height_Field for the Crayon Stick. They are decorated with individual Image_Maps maps for the crayon wrappers. Murals: a. The first mural is a box decorated with Chinese characters (generic). b. The second mural is a box decorated with a Chinese Emperor (unnamed). The mysterious writing on the mural can be deciphered as follows: 1. Upper left reads "James Anthony Coons" in the "Symbol" Font (Greek). 2. Upper right reads "POV-Ray Epic Proportions Topic" in the "Markab" Font. 3. Lower left reads "His sons were giants, literally" in the "Markab" Font. c. The third mural is a box decorated with Chinese Calligraphy (generic). Creative Pigment Blending: I found that it is possible to "subtract" colors by averaging in negative "weight" values within the Pigment_Map. It is possible to create intricate patterns from a simple pattern by translating, rotating, scaling, adding and substracting variations of a single Pigment. This is the method I used for the Sky and Grass. About This Submission: This is my first submission to the IRTC. I have been looking at other IRTC entries for ideas and to occasionally render them myself. This is my first Project with a specific idea in mind - most other projects just evolved as I went. I was in Chile and Mexico for nearly a month doing missions work, so I was unable to put as much effort into the final project as I wanted. I developed a rather useful method of working on this project. I created a "Master Image", which I kept in BMP format. When making small changes, I rendered a small area around the change and then copy/pasted the resulting change into the Master Image using MicroSoft PaintBrush, which I kept open during development. Only when major changes were made (and of course, when doing the final render), was it necessary to re-render the entire image. I also found is useful to insert "Flags" at important locations in the source code, so I could easily find what I was looking for. So, the Flags "/Can", "/Wall", "/Cam", "/Road", etc, help me locate important sections more easily. I kept the Flags in the Final Source File. Interpreting the Topic "Epic Proportions" Before arriving at my final idea for "Epic Proportions", I considered these: 1. "When the Gods " ... play chess, get mad, make mistakes, 2. Paul Bunyan's Market - Containing such items as "continental shelf", "northern lights" and "gulf stream", as well as "sales" on very large objects, such as the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, etc. 3. Also Paul Bunyan's Garage Sale and Auction, Flea Market. 4. God's Prototypes - CAD images of galaxies, planets, rejections, etc. 5. Chess Game with large objects for pieces, played by giants. 6. What "normal-sized" people would do with Paul Bunyan's throw-aways. 7. Small things made of large things, such as DNA made of planets. 8. Large things made of small things, such as a molecule made of galaxies. 9. Lego Landscape - With a few changes, this lead to my final idea. I hope my interpretation is humorous to someones else beside myself. James Anthony Coons