TITLE: "Rock of Faith"
NAME: Robert J Becraft
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: Castlewrks@aol.com
WEBPAGE: http://user.aol.com/castlewrks/                        http://user.aol.com/castlewrks/metaphaze/index.html <--
some graphics used POV
                       
http://user.aol.com/castlewrks/metaphaze/frisco/frisco.htm  <--- Mont Frisco
POV castle
                         http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/6080 <-- POV
City Suburbs

TOPIC: Great Engineering Achievements
COPYRIGHT: I submit to the standard raytracing competition copyright
JPGFILE: rocofait.jpg
ZIPFILE: rocofait.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV for DOS 3.01, run under OS/2 WARP

TOOLS USED: 
    POV, TM, TGA2JPG converter

RENDER TIME: 
    2 hours and 15 minutes 640x480 (3 hours and 20 minutes 800x600)

HARDWARE USED: 
    IBM 6855 233Mhrz


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Rock of Faith is a model of a cathedral.  It is representative of what I
consider one of man's greatest attempts at Engineering perfection.  Cathedrals
were created without the advantages of modern equipment and high-tech
machinery, yet so many still stand as a tribute to the fine craftsmanship the
builders used in their construction.

Rock of Faith is not intended to look like any particular cathedral, but is
drawn from the overall concepts imbodied in the construction of many of the
major cathedrals of the world.  There is a set of towers on the front end,
reaching to the sky.  The center transcept is divided into three layers with
the upper layers pierced by windows to lighten the load of the entire wall. 
Buttresses carry the load out and down to the ground over a set of aisles that
widen the footprint of the entire building.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


This image was created by first building height-fields for the land-forms.  Two
height-fields form the ground.  One is used to create the lower ground, while a
second is used to create the mound on which the cathedral sits.  To give a
flat-topped heightfield, the height-field was pushed all the way to the highest
level over an area appropriate for the top of the mound.  Two of the mounds are
placed together to further expand the flat top of the mound without spreading
the heightfield triangles too far and thus revealing the triangular pattern.

The ground is less important and 4 large mostly flat plains are created.

Once the mound was established, the base was constructed ontop of which were
added the details of the building.

Specific hints for the detail.

1) Start with the gross parts of the structure... the big blocks of the parts of
the building.  In the case of this structure, that is the main aisle, the side
aisles, the nave, and the towers.  Position them and get a rough idea of what
each looks like from a variety of perspectives.

2)  Begin to add detail... again, taking the gross approach.  With each
iteration, the details of the structure will become more realistic.  Naturally,
with each pass, the render will take a bit longer.

3)  Compartmentalize your sections.  The source for this render allows for each
part of the picture to be turned on and off by uncommenting the appropriate
variable flag at the top of the source deck.  Thus, when rendering the
building, the land, water, base, sky and even parts of the building could be
turned off rendering only the detail part being updated.

4)  Any time you work with a building or "humanized" render, always ensure that
you have something of scale that people can use as a reference point for
interpreting the scale of the objects in the picture.  Two things aid in that
respect in this picture.  The first is the steps in the lower left hand corner
along with the railings.  The second is the door at the base of the nave.

As with any POV construct, this one is far from complete.  Using the reiterative
process of adding details, more and more detail could be added to the finished
POV source.  Each render would then become more and more real.

Any questions or comments, please feel free to email me at:
Robert J Becraft
castlewrks@aol.com