* * * * * * * * * * * * *
* WAFE *
* Dan Connelly *
* djconnel@flash.net *
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
EMAIL: djconnel@flash.net
NAME: Dan Connelly
TOPIC: Elements
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: WAFE
COUNTRY: United States
WEBPAGE: http://www.flash.net/~djconnel/
RENDERER USED: Vue d'Esprit 2.02
TOOLS USED: Paint Shop Pro 5.01, Thumbs Plus!
RENDER TIME: 6hr7min
HARDWARE USED: PII 266 MHz, 128 MB memory
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:see below
DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: see below
tools used detail:
Vue d'Esprit 2.02 :
rendering and modeling
Paint Shop Pro 5 :
signature
Thumbs Plus! :
JPEG conversion
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* NOTE : This is my second entry this round. As has been *
* often discussed on the mailing lists, dual entries are *
* neither disallowed by the rules nor discouraged by the *
* promoters. However, if you wish to apply punitive *
* scoring for what you interpret as a violation of your *
* personal version of the rules, please apply that *
* penalty to this image, rather than my other one, as *
* this is the second of the two. *
* thanks, Dan *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Motivation
----------
Vue d'Esprit 2.02 ( http://www.e-onsoftware.com/ ) is a new
renderer packed with features for its FF600 price. It applies
considerable enhancements to the excellent terrain rendering
features of version 1.2, including object support. I normally
wouldn't make two entries in a round, but I wanted to see
this excellent package (a big improvement on Bryce 3D for
terrains) got some exposure in the contest.
Theme Notes
------------
Water, Air, Fire, Earth : the Four Elements....
A study in contrast.... The viewer, perched among a patch
of tropical plants near the short, observes a tree growing
impossibly on a rocky formation extending from a murky sea
as it is enveloped in a mysterious flame. Billows of smoke
fill the air, darkening the skies already obscured by
ominous clouds. Overhead, an airship surveys the strange
scene, safe from the flames below.
Technical Notes
---------------
The tree and plants were generated using Vue d'Esprit's internal
vegetation generator.
The flames and smoke were generated using "fuzzy textures",
a version of POV interiors but with an excellent GUI that
makes them much quicker to assemble and test.
The terrain objects were created using the Vue height field
generator. This is the best height field generator I've used
(Leveler is the best editor). But the key to good terrains is
texturing, and the hierarchical texture editor in Vue is much
easier than Bryce's obscure texture format. The textures are
modified from those supplied with the package.
The sky is a modified form of one of those supplied with
Vue. It is a two-level texture making extensive use of
fractalized noise in color, transparency, and normal.
Haze and fog were added, and the light characteristics
were set to increase contract (hue and luminance) of the
image.
The airship is a mesh model supplied with the package.... Vue 2
supports DXF meshes, so there is no shortage of available models.
The textures were customized for this image.
The water was pretty much textured from scratch. But this
is a fairly straightforward process.... none of the virtuosity
of doing good POV water.
The lighting is provided by the sun and two yellow point lights
(shadow defocus set to 10 degrees) inside the flames.
That's basically it -- substantial time was spent getting the fire & smoke
to look good, and playing with textures, lighting, and composition.
Vue 2.02 still has a few bugs which took a lot of work to
minimize.
Artistic Notes
--------------
I focused on spatial balance and elemental contrast :
foreground : plants -- life, a subset of Earth
focus : a tree in flame on rocks the sea -- earth, fire, and air
together. Life and death. Organic and inorganic.
background : the sea, the short : earth meets water meets air.
left : the expanse of the sea
right : the perspective of the shoreline and the mist
bottom : the Earth, the fire, the plants
top : natural elements : the brooding clouds, the distant sun,
the billowing smoke ... the last an intimate mixture of earth
and air.
synthetic elements : the airship -- steel, cloth, and air..
driven by fire, yet fire is its worst enemy,
So everything here is placed and distributed to highlight the contrasts
and the interactions between the Four Elements.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIXES
==========
Rendering Settings
------------------
High quality annihilating (9x adaptive).
Defocused reflections from the water.
Defocused transmission near the flames.
Soft shadows were specified for point lights.
Camera Focus
-------------
I could easily have rendered the foreground out of focus. Yet this
is not to my taste.
The reason is I view out of focus areas of the image as simulating
photographs, imperfect, technologically limited reproductions of nature,
rather than simulating nature itself. Healthy humans don't view
near objects like the plant out of focus -- the eyes quickly adjust,
and objects out of the focal plane are mostly ignored. If one then
looks at the background, the eyes adjust again, and it comes into
focus. The plants are no longer important. Thus I want my images to
be the same -- you can see maximum detail at all depths.
Simulating photography has its place. It just isn't my intent here.
So the omission of defocusing is intentional -- my preference,
my taste.
Consider this -- if a digital camera was sold with pixel-by-pixel autofocus,
delivering excellent clarity at all depths, would you use it? Raytracing
gives us such a camera. I choose to to accept it.
POV Note
--------
Everything here could have been done in POV-Ray 3.1 with a good
height field generator (gforge or leveller), although the
slope and altitude dependencies of the textures would be difficult
without patches such as those included in TMPOV (http://twysted.net).
However, it would have presented a substantially greater
challenge to achieve the same effect.
Source Code
-----------
Available upon request -- the files are too large to include here.