TITLE: Orb of Dranor
NAME: Miroslav Hundak
COUNTRY: Croatia
EMAIL: dran@fly.cc.fer.hr
WEBPAGE: http://fly.cc.fer.hr/~dran
TOPIC: Glass
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: krunasgn.jpg
ZIPFILE: krunasgn.zip
RENDERER USED: Povray for Win95 3.0
TOOLS USED: pen and paper
RENDER TIME: far too long (>24h)
HARDWARE USED: Pentium-100, 32MB RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
P.S. Excuse my poor knowledge of English orthography (spelling).
        In an early morning, or late afternoon a hero came to the
altar of Orb of Dranor to seek magick powers from the ghosts of
kings and emperors long forgotten, who's souls now dwell inside the Orb.
He or She had to pass many dangerous places and slay many powerful
creatures to get to this place. Hero is very tired now after a long
journey and an exhaustive fight with the ghosts of Orb. So He or She
went to enjoy a swim in a refreshing waters of giant BlueEye Lake,
before the winds bring stormy clouds from the north (front in picture),
carelesly leaving equipment on the premises, like crown (cro.f. kruna)
and sword by the water bowl and a shield leaning on a pillar, while
magick of the Orb radiates red glow, as if it's a beacon for ships that
sailed many many centuries ago.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 
        I rendered the image with +a0.2 +am2 +r3 options, and there it is.
Because of the small color differences in the sky texture viewing this
image in 24-bit is much better than in 16-bit colours.
        The idea was to make a crystal crown on a wooden polished table,
preferably in a castle interior (stone walls, etc.). 
        But. That seemed to simple, so I made a water bowl on a pillar and
put the crown on the edge of bowl. Somehow that didn't work out very good.
        I put the water bowl with the crown in the secondary position, and
designed some mean-looking fingers holding some sort of magic orb that
glows on the tips of their nails and put it in the center of the scene.
That was not enough offcourse.
        I added a few pillars, decorated floor and finaly a sword leaning on
a water bowl. The top of the sword's handle is decorated with the green
gem, and it is held by the same objects-fingers that hold the magic orb,
except on a sword there are four simetrical fingers, and the gem is in the
hand, not on the tips of nails. I put it all standing on a height-field
that represents a small cape.
        After a several consultations with my younger brother I finally came
to the decision to change the material that crown is made of, so it was
crystal no more. Instead I made it look metallic with goldened surfaces.
I did that because the crown is too small in the image for its details to
be made out if it were transparent (crystalic) especially with the water
behind it.
        The scene has heavy ambiental lighting for realism. Radiosity
would do better justice to realism, but then I figured that it would be
convenient for image to by rendered by the end of the century. Main light
is area_light spanning widely from behind so that the shadows are so
soft that it is hard to recognize them. I added extra light to the inside
of the magic orb, which is why the orb has no phong or specular.
        The sky was initially light blue with scattered clouds, but I wanted
something gloomy so I made a few modifications to the colours and it
turned out unexpectedly well. Finally I added some finishing touches,
like a cape in the far, and a shield (with Croatian standard) leaning
on the pillar. The lake water has bumps for normal. I could have used
ripples or waves, but I had no nerves to experiment with those.