EMAIL: somersj@aya.yale.edu NAME: David S. Johnson TOPIC: Childhood COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: The Toy Left Behind COUNTRY: USA WEBPAGE: http://www.oursquare.com/members/somersj/ RENDERER USED: Povray 3.0 TOOLS USED: SPatch and Texture Magic RENDER TIME: Sometime between 5 and 6 hours (the save energy mode was on and blanked the screen which for some reason I was unable to unblank and so I couldn't see the POV stats) HARDWARE USED: Pentium, 133 Megahertz IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The image is of a crazed clown driving a wooden toy train which carries some alphabet blocks which have seen better times. The action takes place in an empty room in an empty house. It was inspired by a childhood memory and fantasy of a toy that was left behind in an empty house after we moved. After we moved I often fantasized the toytrain taking on a life of its own and moving throughout the house in search of its missing master. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: This is my first submission and also includes a lot of POV firsts for me (use of bezier patches, spotlight, atmosphere, halo, and layered textures). I would have liked to have added more detail but ran out of time. The window and windowframe needs work although a more developed window frame would perhaps distract attention from the train and the clown. It would be nice if the smoke coming out of the smokestack was more substantial (billowing) but this was my first experience with halos and there was not enough time to experiment. Also the headlight on the train could use some more detail which I did not have time to finish. The clown and the bell were made using the excellent freeware modeller SPatch. This was my first experience at trying to make a human like form and face and took quite a while to do although I could definitely use more practice in this area. Unfortunately the clown face is too far away in the picture to see all the details and textures clearly. The face itself is made up of three separate objects: a long nose which fades from red to white, the smile and the rest of the face. Anton Matkovic's SPatch tutorial for drawing heads was a great help. The nightcap attached to the clowns head could use more work. It is not that visible and perhaps the clown costume itself could use a more striking texture . Most of the textures were created using the Shareware Texture Magic which was a great help. (Now that I have finished the picture I can send in the registration). The alphabet blocks have the most interesting texture although you cannot see them that well since they are obscured by the atmosphere. The white portions of the blocks are stained perhaps from spilled coffee and the blue portions look as if some of the blue paint has been rubbed off revealing the wood underneath. A clearer view of the blocks by themselves can be seen on my graphics page at http://www.oursquare.com/members/somersj/graphics.html. The rest of the train was created using CSG. You can look at the pov scripts in the zip file lftbehnd.zip.