TITLE: Thirsting for Home
NAME: Maarten Dinger
COUNTRY: New Zealand
EMAIL: irtc@maartendinger.net
WEBPAGE: none (yet)
TOPIC: Out of Place
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: thirstin.jpg
ZIPFILE: thirstin.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.6

TOOLS USED: 
    AC3D for modelling. Photoshop for texture manipulation.

RENDER TIME: 
    2 Hr, 54 min

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium IV 2.4 GHz, 1 GB RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    Being still relatively new to raytracing, I wanted to do the
blatantly cliche planet scene, and this very broad topic was a good excuse to
give it a shot. What is the most "out of place" object you can think of in
space - stranded on a rock, orbiting Earth? A toilet? A mailbox? A potted
plant? Looking through my various models, I finally decided to recycle a model
from my IRTC Toys and Games submission (The Drunking Bird). It doesn't belong
in space at all - it's a novelty item, and it's function relies on water and
gravity - two things you won't find orbiting Earth. Its out of place, and wants
to get back to Earth and H2O, hence the title.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 
    Naturally I started out by Googling
the internet for help on creating a Pov-Ray rendered Earth globe, but was
surprised that I couldn't find anything I considered realistic enough (although
I'm sure they must be out there, somewhere). However, I did find an excellent
guide as to how to do a near photo-realistic Earth using 3D Studio Max
(http://www.noirextreme.com/earth) the images needed for the globe are also
available from this URL). Unfortunately, I don't have 3D Studio Max. Thus, I
followed the almost step-by-step guide and figured out how to do each (to the
best of my limited ability) with Povray. The Earth consists of four layers: 1)
Ground Level is a colour NASA image of Earth with a topography bump map applied
to give mountains and valleys some depth. 2) Sea Level is a 2-colour mask image
of the water portions - a specular finish and wave normal were applied. 3)
Cloud Level is another NASA image of typical clouds - transparency using a
transmit routine was applied based on color - black is fully transparent moving
to white which is fully opaque. A granite normal was added to give the clouds a
fluffy appearance. 4) Atmosphere Level is a media statement to give a blue
tint. Finally, two lightsources and radiosity were needed to properly
illuminate the planet. 

I also wanted to try an isosurface (this is my first one), and the result is the
rock in foreground. The Drinking Bird model was created in AC3D; I had used it
before in Toys and Games (someone mentioned it was too small in that image, but
I'm sure I won't get that comment this time).

The final touch is the prominant lens flare which, as per rules of the IRTC, was
not added post rendering. As far as I know, there are only two lens flare
"plug-ins" available for Povray: NKFlare by Nathan Kopp and Lens Effects by
Chris Colefax. After many hours experimenting I opted for the latter, since it
was easily (i.e. painstakingly ;-) ) customisable to give the lens effect I
wanted.