TITLE: Canyon
NAME: Jaime Vives Piqueres
COUNTRY: Valencia, Spain.
EMAIL: jaime@ctav.es
WEBPAGE: http://members.xoom.com/jaimevives
TOPIC: LANDMARKS
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: canyon.jpg
ZIPFILE: canyon.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1g for Linux, (C) POV-Team.

TOOLS USED: 
    Kwrite (KDE), to write the POV scripts
                The Gimp to convert TGA to JPG, and for some HF.

RENDER TIME: 
    34 min.

HARDWARE USED: 
    Intel P-II 450 MMX (500 overcloked), 64MB RAM.


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


  Uknown landmark (hmmm... a bit absurd!).


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


  As all my scenes, this one started as a experiment. And, of course, with
height_fields! The idea was to generate with POV succesive height_fields to
match with each other, and use them later to create a continuos wall out of
several height_fields. The first tries inspired to me the idea of a little
canyon, a gorge really, with tall walls creating a narrow pass. This seemed
as a good subject for a "remarkable" place. 

  Here is a list of the different parts and the techniques used for each:

  + CANYON

    Height_fields. Generated with POV. The contiguous walls are obtained
    moving the camera just to match with the previous height_field. The
    bed is done with other height_field, for the stones under water.

  + RIVER

    Height_field + fog. Here I used again the technique of contiguous 
    height_fields to build the long water surface. A underwater fog 
    was added to make the transparence less uniform.

  + BRIDGE

    Height_fields. The idea for the bridge was really obvious: the scene
    seemed to want it. Is done with 3 height_fields and some cylinders.

  + REEDS

    Meshes + CSG. Variation of my typical and simple "curved-leaf" plants,
    adapted to look like reeds. The dificult part was to bend them.

  + SKY

    Planes. Another idea special for this scene. It's so simple that I wonder
    how I've not tought on it. It's a simple stack of planes and a blue
    sky_pehere. The trick is in the texture aplied to the planes, "hidding"
    his flat nature by succesive modifications to the pigments and filter
    values. Looks nice!

  For more details, see the code in the zip file (some PNG files used as
  height_fields are not present: trace them first from the respective .pov). 


P.S.: Any similarity of this scene with my past entry "running" is pure
coincidence and in any way intentional. Really!! :)


  Jaime Vives Piqueres
  Valencia, 29-08-1999.