EMAIL:		Sonya_Roberts@geocities.com
NAME:		Sonya Roberts
TOPIC:		Magic
COPYRIGHT:	I submit to the standard raytracing competition copyright.
RENDERER USED:	POVRay 3.02 watcom.Win32[Pentium Optimised]
TOOLS USED:	Adobe Photoshop 3.0 to add file info and convert to JPG, and for
			creation of image and material maps.
			Texture Magic 0.95 for creation of some of the textures.
			"books", "pyr_cube", and "hairycyl" plugins.
RENDER TIME:	1 day, 5 hours, 51 minutes, and 21 seconds (okay, it could
               have taken a lot less time, but I used radiosity, even though
               it didn't make all that big a difference in this scene...)
HARDWARE USED:	Pentium Pro 200 w/64 meg memory and Matrox Millenium 2mg Graphics Card
TITLE:		Follow That Luggage!
COUNTRY:		Canada
WEB PAGE:		http://www.geocities.com/Soho/Lofts/1022

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

It's another event-filled day on the Discworld.  The Library
at Unseen University, home to wizardry, is witness to yet
another world-threatening adventure.

The Luggage, that well-known travel accessory of sapient pearwood,
accurately described as "one part trunk, four parts homicidal
maniac" is on the rampage once again.  No one is quite sure just
what set it off, but that demonic escapee from the Dungeon 
Dimensions that's scuttling for cover might have something to
do with it.

Chasing after The Luggage is it's owner, the Discworld's worst
wizard, Rinceward, wearing the standard wizard's uniform of
robe and pointy hat.  Not having much in the way in seniority
(none, in fact), he has not decorated his apparel with the usual
jackdaw's collection of gold lace, Ankh-stones, and vermine, but
has instead contented himself with embroidering "wizzard" on his
hat in silver thread.

His old friend and sometimes travelling companion, Cohen the
Barbarian, octagenarian hero, is also chasing after the Luggage.
Cohen's the only person known to have survived a fight with the
Luggage, having once wrestled it into submission long enough
to pry it open in an effort to determine what it does with all
the people and other objects it swallows.  He found nothing in
it but some dirty laundry, but that's another story.

The Librarian, who was turned into an Orangutang by a freak
thaumatergical accident several years ago, is looking on in
astonishment.  He's resisted all efforts to turn him back into
a human, as he finds the climbing ability and extra hands useful
in a library where, due to the high background levels of magic,
shelves exist in more dimensions than three and books lead a
private and sometime vicious life of their own.  He also likes
how all the big questions in life have resolved down to where
his next banana is coming from.

While his attention is elsewhere, some of the University's ants
are making off with the sugar cubes from his tea.  The high levels
of magic have mutated many things around the University, including
the ants, who are presently engaged in building a sugar-cube pyramid
in which to entomb one of their queens.  While a team of ants
lowers one cube to the floor, more are rolling another cube away
along a path of rollers.

Taking advantage of the confusion, one of the Libraries more
reknowned grimoires, "The Books of Going Forth Around Elevenish"
(written by a lazy llamanistic sect) is making a break for
freedom.

The Death of Rats, passing by one his way to an appointment in the
kitchens with some strychnine-laced bran and a colony of rodents,
watches the action in bemusement.

EXPLANATION OF IMAGE:

There's a series of books by Terry Pratchett about a magical world
called the Discworld.  It's carried through space on the backs of
four elephants perched on the shell of Great A'Tuin, a giant turtle.

This scene shows some of the more well-known and frequently-appearing
characters from the books, arranged in a scene that does not, to the
best of my knowledge, appear in any of them, though it is comprised
of elements that have appeared in these books.  Such as the ants
stealing the sugar, the Luggage being on the rampage, and Things
from the Dungeon Dimensions breaking through into reality.  The exception
is the seal on the wall behind the Librarian.  This is based on a
stamp that Mr. Pratchett was using on books at a book-signing I went
to, and is actually the bookplate of Death..."Ex Libris Mortis - Hic
Estvita Vester".  I know the first line means, roughly, "From the
Library of Death", but if anyone could enlighten me as to what
"Hic Estvita Vester" means I'd be grateful.

If you are not already familiar with these books, I highly recommend
them...they are "typical British science fiction and fantasy" if you
consider Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Doctor Who, and Red Dwarf
to be typical examples.  Ie., funny and filled with strange things
and amusing characters and events.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

This was the first image where I've used blobs to any degree.  I've
dabbled with them in the past, but never really done all that much
with them.  I found them to be really useful for creating organic shapes,
espcially given the way that POV can blend pigment colours from blob
component to blob component.  Rincewind, Cohen, the Librarian, the
Death of Rats, the escapee from the Dungeon Dimensions, and several
parts of the Luggage, are all made from blobs.

The Rincewind's hair and eyebrows, Cohen's beard and eyebrows, and the
Librarian's furry head and shoulders, are all done by distributing
curved hairs made of linked cylinders, using #while and #rand.  The easiest
distribution is problably the beard and eyebrows (simple rectacgular
arrays) while the most complex was the hair on the orangutang's shoulders,
which not only gets sparser towards the neck, but curves along the
shoulders and hangs down towards the front and back.  The method does
use quite a lot of objects (each hair is 5 cylinders joined end-to-end,
except for eyebrows which are only 3), but the results are good.

The Library itself is created by several #while loops that create the
shelving and the relevant books (the books are done using a preexisting
plugin I created for another scene some time ago).  The ceiling and
one side wall are mirrored surfaces, to make the room seem bigger
than it actually is and show the other library on the ceiling, something
alluded to in several of the Discworld books.

The scene also uses a lot of image maps and material maps, for the
various signs, the lettering on Rincewind's hat, the lettering on the
seal, the pattern on the mug and plate, and the windows.

Everything else is just standard CSGs of regular primitives.
�