TITLE: Contrast with Povray
NAME: Mitch Richling
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: richmit@member.ams.org
WEBPAGE: http://hardwoodproduct.airweb.net/personal/richmit/index.htmlJPGFILE: mjr_con.jpg
ZIPFILE: mjr_con.zip

TOPIC: contrast
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: mjr_con.jpg
ZIPFILE: mjr_con.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.1.g

TOOLS USED: 
    Emacs, GCC, Povray, xv, Linux

RENDER TIME: 
    9 minutes 48.0 seconds (588 seconds)

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium II 400MHz, 384Mb RAM, 21' Sony FD, Voodoo3 AGP.


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


This image was my answer to the question: "What can I come up with if
I only allow myself to use black spheres and white boxes in a Povray
input file?" In this way, I have chosen to exhibit contrast at the
technical level of modeling and rendering, rather than in the image
itself.  This has had the effect of displaying an obvious contrast in
the image between the rounded, organic, black art on display and the
flat, dead, white museum.  On another level, the very act of choosing
to generate contrast in the technique rather than in the result is in
contrast to the typical submission. :)

This image portrays a sculpture of an stone tree as it might be
displayed in a typically sterile, white museum of modern art.  I think
this image is rather reminiscent of a corner display one might find at
the Dallas Museum of Modern art.  

This image is a first for me.  It's my first attempt to model
something that might actually exist, and it's my first submission to
the IRTC.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


Because of the limitation of color and shape, the primary tools left
for me to play with were creative lighting effects and normal
modifiers.  The lighting is the most dramatic component of this
image--IMHO.

The many shadows on the walls and floor are primarily due to many
lights placed in the "ceiling" of the room.  They are all at the same
height and are in a grid pattern.  The lights are all rather dim.

The tree is actually just a bunch of spheres.  Each one is black with
a smooth, shiny texture.  The reason for the shinny, grey look has
nothing to do with pigment, but rather with the large number of lights
placed around the tree.  The tree has more than 20 lights placed on
the surfaces of two concentric spheres placed near the center of the
main branching point.  These lights have a dramatic fade-off value and
thus don't affect the shadows and lighting of the scene, just the
tree.

The tree that is the centerpiece of this image was generated with a
bit of C code that I wrote.  The code is quite ugly and a bit of a
hack.  I have been working on a better version written in Java, and I
hope to make it publicly avaliable when I have completed it.

The floor is NOT a texture, rather it is really made up of "tiles"
that have been placed in a grid.  I used a large separation between
the tiles to achieve the bold grid appearance.

The walls are textured with the standard wrinkle normal map provided
with Povray.  The wall/floor trim is constructed from 4 boxes in
Povray.  Two of those boxes are of zero thickness and have a high
ambient light attached to them--this way the part of the trim parallel
to the walls is brighter than the walls, but still has shadows landing
on it.

The benches are simply made up of two boxes each.  The top box has the
standard Povray crackle normal applied to it.  The pigment used was
white, but the normal modifier has a rather dramatic effect.