TITLE: The Temple of Heaven
NAME: Johnny Yip
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: parallel94_53tx@hotmail.com
TOPIC: Landmarks
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION
JPGFILE: tiantan.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POVRay 3.02


TOOLS USED: 
    POVRay 3.02 - for typing in the script
            Photoshop - conversion of image; 
                 texture editing;
          adding copyrights
            SpilinEditor - for creating lathes
            Terragen - sky background


RENDER TIME: 
    00d 03h 05m 01s


HARDWARE USED: 
    Intel P90, 64MB RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    The Temple of Heaven, a place where the rulers of China
            pray for good harvest during the Ming and Ching Dynasty.
            Temple of Heaven is the name of a group of temples. The
            temple shown in this picture, the QiNian Temple, is the
            largest and the most marvelous temple of the group...
            While the king prays, birds have arrived... these birds
            are often considered as the "Messenger of Heaven"...


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

Here I shall break this scene down into several components:
1. The Main Temple Structure
   - this is simply a lathe structure with a gradient texture_map
   - columns are cylinders and the door_holes are CSG difference
   - the name plate on the third level is a group of rotated boxes
   - the roof bricks (if you can see them...) is created using a series of
cones
   - some textures are image_map
2. The Alter Platform Structure
   - the main platform is a lathe structure
   - the balustrades are two superquadric ellipsoid object
   - the side rails are CSG primitives
   - stair case is created with a #while directive of increasing radius
   - some textures are image_map or bump_map
3. Misc. Objects
   - the black object beside the stair case (Ding) is a union of prism 
     and lathe
   - birds are created using blobs
4. Background Scenery
   - the sky is created using a sky_sphere and an image_map (created in 
     Terragen)
   - the ground is a combination of bump_map and image_map

REMARKS: The full two months period is used and all the calculations are
         PAINFUL because the alter is circular!  That means I have to use
         radian measure (since most of the mathematical calculations are 
         a mess, therefore unable to release the source).  If you have other
         questions, just drop me an e-mail.