TITLE: "The Garden" NAME: Robert J Becraft COUNTRY: USA EMAIL: castlewrks@aol.com WEBPAGE: http www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/labs/6080 TOPIC: Nature COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: garden.jpg ZIPFILE: garden.zip RENDERER USED: Povray for DOS 3.01 running under OS/2 TOOLS USED: Povray (image creation), I_view32 (TGAJPG conversion), PaintShop Pro (add copyright) RENDER TIME: 5 hours, 48 meg HARDWARE USED: Pentium 233 IMAGE DESCRIPTION: This picture is composed of several elements that are intended to represent the theme of "Nature". Comp 1: Nature: the 4 elements of Air, Water, Fire and Earth. Nature is further presented through the panels of pictures representing elements of nature on Earth. Comp 2: Man, man is represented by the blueprint of Leonardo's Vitruvian man in the background, manna or corn in the center and Earth rotated to the African/Euphrate's region thought to be the site of man's origins on Earth. Man is represented by a blue-print because his origins came well after the elements and the rules by which those elements interacted... in representing the base elements, man is an image of what is to come. Comp 3: Earth and man become a central element in the garden of planets in our solar system. Earth is surrounded by the elements of nature that blended together make it a unique place in our solar system. The other three places represented are our moon, Mars and Jupiter... all of which hang desolate and unaccompanied in the bottomless sky behind the main display. Comp 4: The edge of the world... as in Columbus's time, the edge of the world was thought to end in a precipace off which ships could sail and never return. The precipace is represented in this picture as the edge of man's world, but also as a reference back to that time when the age of discovery brought man ever closer to understanding the Earth and world upon which we depend for life. So while man in Comp 2 is represented as a blue-print, not yet here, his perception of the world in an age gone recently by is also represented without the precipitious drop into infinity and oblivion, but instead as a sweeping gallery of images of the real world as it exists today. Revelation and discovery, man's never ending quest to understand the world and universe in which we live. Comp 5: Heart-beat, the ripples in the water are like the pattern of a heart beating. All higher life on Earth have some kind of heart-beat that is necessary for them to be alive. This image would not be complete without a discussion of the animation of the objects in the image. - The flames would be leaping (of course) - All of the planets would be spinning, slowly, very elegantly - The image of vitrovian man would be tumbling slowly. - The images on the panels would rotate from one panel to the next around the panels. - The ripples on the water would slowly move outwards from the center point, new ripples would start - The clouds would move lazily by. - The sun would move around giving the image morning, noon, evening and darkness... a note about darkness, all the panels are lit with spot-lights. - The earth and its platform and the Fire cauldron would gently bounce up and down creating the ripples on the water, and the heartbeat of life in the image. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: This image was created using straight POVRAY primatives with image maps (gifs) applied to the spheres and panels. A heightfield was used to create the earth under the earth globe. There are also heightfields at the base of the first few corn-stalks. Only the ones in view were given lumps as the memory required to put them on all of the bases was exhorbinant and it wouldn't render. Switches are available in the source to turn on and off features of the render. The source is divided into three areas, 1st is the control area with the switches, lights and camera postition. 2nd is the CSG objects and 3rd is the actual objects. Note that the switch to turn off an object is reflected in the CSG section as well as the object section. Rendering with alot of CSG objects that are never used as in the cornfield object can extend the overall parse time of the entire image. By cutting out the parsing of sections that aren't used as well as the objects, some sections of the render can be viewed very quickly. In addition, the global settings below were found to be necessary to eliminate shadows in the flames that created cone shaped black objects.