TITLE: Picadilly Circus
NAME: Francois Dispot
COUNTRY: France
EMAIL: wozzeck@club-internet.fr
WEBPAGE: http://www.wozzeck.net
TOPIC: The City
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: fdpicad.jpg
ZIPFILE: fdpicad.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Unix Megapov alpha 0.3

TOOLS USED: 
    XEmacs, Xfig, Gimp, crossroads, Moonlight modeller, Gilles Tran's
window macro, LaTeX (for quantum mechanics expressions), C. Colefax's Galaxy
macros

RENDER TIME: 
    7h40 using a single processor and 100 Mb peak memory

HARDWARE USED: 
    dual PII/448 w/ 128Mb Ram under Linux 2.2.12-SMP


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


In a slightly (but not so) different world, which references would be quite
different, Picadilly Circus could look like that. I let you discover the
differences by yourselves. Lots of quantum mechanics, I guess...

This picture will be part of my "Germain Landfelder Official Calendar", and will
stand near a related (French) text as usual.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


As usual everything began with a fair amount of time spent searching for
photographs of the genuine location and commercials, and good looking fonts.
Another long part of the work consisted in getting the ideas for the brands and
adds to parody.

The result is a quite composite picture. Lots of CSG and macros for the settings
and bus, and a few meshes (from 3D Cafe and other free sources) for the cars
and female statues.

A limited subset of the specific functions from the Megapov were used: a
sphere-sweep on the cola ad, and the m??_extent() functions to ease the
placement of the cars and text. This pic also features radiosity, and the very
convenient light_groups system. The source code also includes motion blur
directives, but rendering time with it was not compatible with the IRTC
deadline.

The most interesting (and reusable) parts are the light halo, which uses a mix
between onion and several radial media, and the pavement macro, which produces
the well known partially circular pattern which covers many streets.

Some parts of the source, involving meshes and fonts which copyrights are not
mine, are not included here. Please ask if you need them.