TITLE: The Mercury Machine NAME: Andrew Clinton COUNTRY: Canada EMAIL: clintona@ibm.net WEBPAGE: http://www3.sympatico.ca/dclinton/ TOPIC: Elements COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: mercmach.jpg ZIPFILE: mercmach.zip RENDERER USED: PovRay 3.1b for Windows TOOLS USED: PovRay 3.1b, SPatch 1.51, Photoshop 3.0 RENDER TIME: 12h 6m 48s HARDWARE USED: Pentium II 333mhz IMAGE DESCRIPTION: I've had a number of ideas pop into my head for interesting ray-tracings: This is one of them. When I saw that the topic was elements I immediately thought about one of my favorites, mercury. The image is of a bizarre and fantastic machine which draws mercury from an underground sea and fires it off in all directions. I had originally had the plan to add a conveyer belt with thermometers entering into the machine, but this idea had to be scrapped because I couldn't get the belt close enough to the camera to see what was in it. Of course, a machine like this is hardly safe, and the poor person standing on the walkway taking the picture is about to meet his demise. Rational observers should stay in the small control booth in the upper right, where they would be safe behind several layers of plexiglass while the machine is in operation. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Almost all the elements (grin) in this image were created using basic csg or simple modeling. Everything was laid out in PovRay without the use of a modeller. The path was done mostly with partial cylinders, partial torii, and boxes. The grate was the tricky part, to create this I used a huge number of flattened cylinders intersected with the shape of the path. I gave the path a dark metal texture with some spots of rust. The mercury sea below the path is a surface modelled in SPatch. I used a grid and raised and lowered various points to give it the turbulent, deformed look. The rock walls are four height fields rotated at 45 degree angles. There is one straight ahead which is flat along the x-y axis, two at the sides rotated around the y axis 45 degrees, and one at the top rotated around the x axis 45 degrees. I gave them a complicated gradient texture (for me anyway) which goes from dark rock to light rock to mercury coated rock at the bottom. The machine was made using a number of csg operations, but most of it is made with cylinders and spheres. I created a number of textures for the different parts, including a reflective texture for the head, yellow texture for the hydralics, and a dark metal texture for the main body. The mercury spitting out of the machine was done using blobs, and once one mercury blob was defined it was rotated around the head at various angles using a number of while loops. The distance from the machine was randomized using the rand(seed()) functions. The small control booth was done by cutting a couple of boxes out of the height field and then "furnishing" the room with a few screens and lights. The green screen is supposed to be a picture of the mercury machine but at this distance it is hard to tell what it is. Last but not least, the canisters on the left wall are cylinders and torii with cut up cones on the top. These are supposed to be connected to the hydralics on the machine, but this is also hard to tell from the camera position. As this is my first competition, I look forward to any comments that anyone might have. There is still a lot that I was hoping to add in to the image, but the deadline was upon me. I only started work about a two weeks before the end, so I missed out on the first month and half. Perhaps I'll get organized quicker next time :) AC