Scene : The Staircase Desc : An early 20th-century staircase in a room. Author : Federico "Quartic" Mena Quintero Email : quartic@polloux.fciencias.unam.mx Date : October 1995 Software : POV-Ray 2.2 (MeSs-DOS Watcom compile) --- Rendering. Photostyler 2.0 SE --- Adding the text to the image. Image Alchemy 1.8 --- Conversions to JPEG. Piclab 1.93 --- Some cropping and joining of images. tgasize 1.0 --- Written by me, to adjust TGA header fields. AutoCAD 10 --- Making 2D versions of the objects (and pull out some exact tangencies, etc.). Derive 1.22 --- Calculate some tangencies that AutoCAD could not pull out (using equations). UCalc 1.8 --- Misc. calculations... CompuShow 9.04a --- Viewing the images. QEdit 3.0 --- Editing everything. 4DOS 5.5 --- A real DOS shell, unlike command.com. Desqview 2.42 --- Multitasking all of the above! Hardware : 486 @ 66MHz, 16 MB RAM (My machine) 486 @ 66MHz, 8 MB RAM (Jedi's machine) Files : staircas.zip staircas.pov --- The main scene file. arches.inc --- The arches. balustra.inc --- An individual baluster and a balustrade. columns.inc --- Placement for all the columns. ionic.inc --- An individual Ionic column. room.inc --- Walls, floor, ceiling, etc. stair.inc --- Everything needed for the staircase and lamps. staircas.jpg --- A small 240x180 preview image. staircas.txt --- This file!!! staircas.jpg --- The final, rendered image. *** Description *** Hello, all. This is my first entry for the raytracing competition. I wanted to participate last month as well (September), but some other things managed to push themselves higher in my priorities list... I've been using POV for about 2.5 years now, and it is a *GREAT* program. I've made several animations, several posters, and a few scenes. I've found POV to have much better output quality than most commercial 3D programs, and although it is a great challenge to create scenes and animations without actually seeing the objects you are creating, it really pays off. I have tried several modellers, but I always keep returning to my good ol' text editor... it is much faster and much more flexible than any modeller I can imagine. I use an old version of AutoCAD (release 10) to draw 2D versions of my objects (say, side and top views) and later pull out the hard stuff... tangencies, intersections, bounding shapes, etc. I use Desqview's 'mark & transfer' (same as cut & paste) to pull out those numbers from the AutoCAD screen and then put them inside my text editor... I find this to be really quick, and I think it is a very convenient way of creating complicated scenes... graph paper and a calculator are just too slow and messy :) Although I am studying Computer Science in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), I love to browse through Architecture books and such... and I find it just as delightful to go out and see nice buildings :) This scene, "The Staircase", is based vaguely on the large staircase of the National Post Office building, located in the center of Mexico City... FYI, it is one of the nicest early 1900s buildings in the city. I tried to keep it simple (the beloved KISS principle) and add some variations of my own to the staircase room... mine is closed, and so far, it has no doors :) Some months ago I had created a Doric column object in POV with the true proportions of real Doric columns, and I was very fond of it (I still am). So I decided to make the three classical Orders, the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian. So far, I have only made the Doric and the Ionic columns... the Ionic being the one I used for this scene. At first I thought of rendering some well-known Greek building or something like that, but finally I decided upon making one of the buildings I like the most... the Post Office building of Mexico City, since I don't think it is known at all outside Mexico. :) First I made some sketches in AutoCAD to obtain the proportions of the room (heights and such), to place the columns, arches, balustrades, etc. I wrote the code for POV... so I had the entire room, but without the staircase. Then I created the StairSupport object, which is one of those things which hold the lamps. I placed them in the scene and rendered it, to see more or less how the lights would look like in the final scene... after about 12 hours (in 640x480 with no antialiasing), I knew that the final 800x600 render would be really slow... I had never made an image or animation with so many light sources (12 in all!). Before rendering this image I thought of using small area lights inside the lamp spheres, but I finally decided not to... the polar icecaps would melt before my machine had completed the final render :) So, for the rendering previews, I removed all the light sources and put a small light source in the center of the room... the previews looked like crap, but at least they were fast (I like to use 200x125 for my previews... on a 320x200 screen, it still has the 4:3 *physical* proportions, and it gives much more detail than 160x100). I wrote the code for the staircase railing... I wish POV had a 'shear' transformation (AFAIK, the only affine it is missing)... things like these railings would be *MUCH* easier to create and to bound with a shear operation. AutoCAD really helped here, for I was able to easily pull out angles, dimensions, etc.... still not as convenient as a shear operation, though. Then I made the steps... perhaps in real life they would be larger, but they looked good, so I left them as they were. Later I remembered that the railings should have some decoration... I made some simple cylinder/torus decorations, and put them on the staircase. I defined the whole StairBlock object, which is a complete staircase block... there are 4 in the final scene. A StairBlock consists of two StairSupport objects, the railings, and the steps. I wrote it this way so that I would be able to easily rotate them and place them into the scene. Finally, I removed the 'test' light source and put back the ones in the StairSupport objects... 12 light sources in all, low-intensity so that their combined intensity adds up to that of a more 'conventional' light source. I really like this scene... although it could be improved. I wish I had had time to add *something* else than the plain walls of the room... it is totally closed, and some doors/corridors/whatever would look much better than that. If someone adds them to the scene, I would like to see it... I think that this scene can be a good starting point for a complete building fly-through animation :) I included the full source code in the ZIP archive... I myself don't like to download a ZIP for a great scene, only to find that it does not contain the full source code or the texture maps... I understand that they can be *big*, but they would be much more useful that way. You can do whatever you want with this scene, *except* saying that you made it. You can use it anyway you please, but give me some credit. That is all I ask for. You can even yank out the objects (the columns and the staircase are nice, IMHO) and use them for your own scenes, but please give me some credit in your source code... Also, if you use any part of this scene, it would be nice if you informed me of what you did... It is always interesting to see what other people can do with your own objects, isn't it? :) Many thanks go to: Ricardo "Jedi" Mendoza --- For letting me render the bottom half of the scene in his machine, and for being such a great friend. The POV-Team --- For creating such a kick-butt program! Keep it up! Mike Miller --- For his great stone textures... I couldn't have made this scene without them. My cousin, Marco A. Mena --- For teaching me the first things about raytracing and POV. He's responsible for hooking me into it. He was also "PCC Marco" in the Graphics areas of AOL. My father, Federico --- For lending all his Architecture books to me. My mother, Leticia --- For not going hysterical when I am still raytracing at 04:00. My brother, Axel --- For learning how to use the "+c" option to continue my renderings after he needs to use the machine. Everyone at comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing --- For being such a great bunch of guys. Well, that's it. I hope you like the scene... personally, I've been amazed with many of the entries of the previous contests :) Federico Mena Quintero Pregonero # 53, Colinas del Sur Mexico City, 01430 Mexico Phone # 643-6634 Email : quartic@polloux.fciencias.unam.mx