TITLE: Take a right
NAME: Bill DeWitt
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: thedewitts@earthlink.net
TOPIC: Landmarks
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: ants101.jpg
ZIPFILE: ants101.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Pov-Ray

TOOLS USED: 
    Pov-Ray for Windows 98

RENDER TIME: 
    12 min.

HARDWARE USED: 
    P-II 400

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

Ants don't have the same kind of landmarks that we do...
This image gained meaning through the subtraction of objects. I started out with
the ants on a kitchen counter, then removed almost everything on the counter to
make it clear that the ants were not using the taoster as a landmark, but were
using their own invisible system. Then I noticed that they seemed to be turning
at the edge of a tile, so I moved them to the floor. Then it looked like they
were turning at right angles to the table legs. So I took out all the furniture
and noticed that the linoleum looked a lot like desert sand...

I almost took out the clouds but I figured they wouldn't really distract from
the essential story of some ants just following a trail in the dessert.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The only real work on this image was the vectran.inc, my own macro to position
body parts. It takes a unit object and transforms it so that the +0.5 z and
-0.5 z points are at the declared positions, scaling it to fit. I had to work
this out for myself since I still haven't figured out what all those vector
functions do.

Everything else was just slapping together some blobs. I have been working on a
more detailed insect.inc that would make a better Ant, but it's not done in
time.