TITLE: Artifacts NAME: Caleb Hines COUNTRY: USA EMAIL: bachmusic1@netscape.net TOPIC: Minimalism COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: artifacs.jpg ZIPFILE: artifacs.zip RENDERER USED: Megapov 1.0 TOOLS USED: GIMP 1.2.0 (on Windows ME) to convert final bmp to jpeg RENDER TIME: 3 minutes, 38 seconds HARDWARE USED: 900 MHz Pentium III IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Mathematical artifacts, relationships that appear to be important but are merely simple consequences of an underlying pattern. In this case, the apparent convergence points, which are caused by diagonal rows which exist in the underlying matrix. Easily seen in this picture are convergence points for diagonal rows representing the ratios 0:1, 1:1, 3:2, 4:3, 2:1, 3:1, 4:1. Some of these same ratios can be used to produce harmonic tones in music, and play important roles in other fields as well. Now they can make pretty artwork too! DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: I had a hard time with the initial concept for this image because I wasn't sure what minimalism meant, even after reading the articles on wikipedia. I basically gathered it was a few simple colors and shapes, sometimes repeated. Big deal. A five year old could do that. At one point I wasn't even intending to enter this round. But as the topic percolated in my mind, the beginning of an idea took shape. My first thought was -- what is the most minimal thing you can do? A blank picture. Obviously that wouldn't do, so bit by bit, I started adding complexity to it. Simple shapes? A sphere should do. You want repetition? Sure, lets layout a plane of spheres. A few vivid colors? Okay, we'll have two planes of spheres, each a different color, hovering in a field of a third color. By this point, I had a concept for the basic picture, so I rendered it, and "discovered" the mathematical "artifacts" that existed along the diagonal rows. I had forgotten about these until I rendered them, and the effect was so startlingly cool that I instantly knew that they would be the topic (and title) of my picture. I was reminded of something I had read on wikipedia that minimalism involved the "exploration" of space. The artifacts definately fit that bill. They give the feel of a tunnel, and lead the eye to explore their distant centers. Still, what I had was pretty boring from an artistic view. I didn't want to add anything to the picture, but I had to change something to spice it up. The first thing I did was tilt the camera and aim it off-center. That instantly made the picture look more interesting, as it no longer resembled a distant horizon. It also revealed another major artifact and added a sense of tension (like things aren't quite balanced). But it still wasn't quite looking finished, so I added a shiny finish to the spheres and moved the light over to one side. I experimented with a subtle fog to provide distance fading, but I had to be very careful to not destroy the balance of colors I had created. I had thought about adding a second shadowless "fill light" to soften the shadows, but I realized that the sharpness of the shadows provided another artistic contrast. I also tried experimenting with radiosity, but it provided no added benefit to what I was was looking for. Overall, I'm pleased with the result, and I hope you are too. Postscript: Unfortunately, the conversion to jpg introduced another type of artifact, but an undesireable one. Using GIMP to do the conversion instead of MS Paint helped a bit, but didn't completely erradicate the errant artifacts. I've included a PNG (also converted with the GIMP) to display the original clarity of the image.