TITLE: At the Lake
NAME: Discord
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: tina@tezcat.com
TOPIC: Water
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: atlake.jpg
ZIPFILE: atlake.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POVRay 3.0 (Win95)

TOOLS USED: 
    Fractint, Paint Shop Pro (to convert to jpeg)

RENDER TIME: 
    5 minutes, 4 seconds (640x480 AA)

HARDWARE USED: 
    pentium 166 (32M RAM)

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


I live practically on the shore of Lake Michigan, and used to vacation up
in northern Minnesota. When I think of water, I think of lakes. Lake
Michigan is large enough that you almost get the sense it goes on
forever, so the image is just a bit of shore and nothing else but lake
and sky. The foreground isn't much like what I get at home, but the lake
and sky are.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


I didn't actually have anything in particular in mind for the foreground
when I started; it came purely out of experimentation. I'm not very good
at predicting what images are going to produce in the way of height
fields, so I tend to just play around with them. (Actually, in general,
that's my approach to POVRay.)

Two height fields were .GIF files created with Fractint (v18.21) with
simple standard color maps (but not the default ones). The image in
all is a mere 3 objects plus a sky sphere: those two height fields,
and the infinite water. One height field is used as grass in the very
front of the image, the other is a rock outcropping. Both use simple
color maps and marble; the water uses waves (of course - what else? :>).
The sky sphere has clouds added with bozo. There's a single light source,
daytime sunlight.

The image was rendered at 640x480 because I run at 800x600 resolution,
and it's easier for me to work with windows that are smaller than my
entire screen.