TITLE: Prisms in a Window
NAME: Bob Sewell
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: bob.sewell@viponline.com
WEBPAGE: http://network3000.com/bob/
JPGFILE: bs-prism.jpg

TOPIC: Glass
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: bs-prism.jpg
ZIPFILE: bs-prism.zip
RENDERER USED: POVRay for Windows 3.00e
TOOLS USED: Moray 2.02.wat, Trees, MS Paint 95, LViewPro, Photoshop 2.5 LE
RENDER TIME: 4 hr, 5 min, 35 sec
HARDWARE USED: Pentium 133MHz with 64MB RAM, 256K Cache
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 



I remember seeing something like this when I was a kid on top of a piano at
my great-aunt's house.  It is just 12 prisms hanging from a brass holder.  The
prisms split the sunlight into its color spectrum and light up the wall with
miniature rainbows.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


I used Moray to model the prism, which I then translated away from the origin
and copied 11 times on a 30 degree rotation about the origin.  The walls
(there's really only two of 'em!), ceiling, window seat, window, ground
outside were all hand-made polygons, boxes and a plane. 

The trees were modeled using Phil Drinkwater's Trees utility.  The spectacles
were modeled in Moray by someone who didn't put their name in the zip file of
.MDL files I downloaded from who-knows-where on the internet.  If you
recognize them as your own, even though I changed the color and fashioned new
lenses out of flattened spheres instead of discs, I thank you, and wish you
would tell me who you are--I'd like to swap some of my .MDL files with you!
The unfinished piece of music was created with MS Paint 95 and converted to a
.GIF format using LViewPro, then attached to a polygon.  

If this image has a 'piece de resistance' it would be the rainbows of
refracted light from the prisms.  Each were made by hand using six spotlights
placed side-by-side close to the wall or seat they shine on, at a steep angle
to elongate the light pool.  I got the idea from the laser example by Dan
Farmer that came with POVRay 3 for Windows.

Photoshop 2.5 LE was used for adding the title, name and copyright, as well as
converting the final image to JPEG format.

Most textures were from the standard include files from the POVray 3.00e
package.  Any others are included in the zip file for this image.  

I am a recent convert to POVRay for Windows (having worked with Polyray for
three+ years) and I must say the power and flexibility of POVRay is superior
to Polyray, although I admit the fault may be my own--it may have been due to
my inability to unleash Polyray's power.  Either way, for me POVRay for
Windows makes raytracing much easier while giving the features and results
I've been yearning for.

Oh, and one more thing:  To Mssrs. Lutz & Kretzschmer, I like Moray a lot, but
in the next version can you 1) allow the user to define the Y-axis as up
instead of Z?  I have a hard time thinking in that orientation.  And 2) tell
me how to get it to put the objects at the origin when exporting to POVRay
instead of 'way down at -39 or something?  Let me move the object away from
the origin instead of having to search for wherever Moray put it.  I'm
probably just doing something wrong, but...