TITLE: The Blue Mosque
NAME: Anne Gregory
COUNTRY: CANADA
EMAIL: albiaprime@aol.com
TOPIC: Worship
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: bluemosq.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray 3.1, sPatch, 3D Win, Paintshop Pro Demo

RENDER TIME: 
    48 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium Pro 160 Mhz, 40megsRAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Another IRTC image inspired by our trip to Turkey and Greece last September
(2000).  For this entry's theme of Worship I have chosen to do a rendition
of one of the worlds finest and most spectacular houses of worship, The
Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey.

The view is from the roof of an adjucent building at about 10:30 hrs on a 
late spring morning looking south west over the Blue Mosque and the Sea of 
Mirmara beyond.  As it is not the tourist season the plaza in front of the
mosque is virtually empty when compared to the normal summer time crowds.

A little history and information on the mosque itself: 

The Blue Mosque, also known as the Sultanahmet Mosque, was built for Ahmet I 
between 1609 and 1616.  The mosque occupies an area of land 64 meters by 72 
meters (that's 208' x 234') and the central dome is 43 meters high (140') 
and 33.4 meters (108.5') in diameter. The mosque contains 260 windows and 
the walls are tiled with approximately 21,043 faience tiles.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


I was originally going to attempt to create an interior of a church with altar
and stained glass windows, but getting a window to look just right eluded me.
My husband and I were in Turkey last fall and visited the Blue Mosque.  It is
a very beautiful building, particularily the interior.  People of any faith
are welcome to visit the mosque (proper attire must be worn, of course!). I
decided to reconstruct it.

In order to begin building the mosque I needed some information on the
dimensions
of it.  Some searching of the Internet provided me with the footprint and the
height and diameter of the central dome.

Building began from the centre with the main dome.  Most of the height
dimensions
(for walls and windows) are guestimates based on other objects in the few
pictures
I had for reference.  Use of a stamp magnifying glass helped immensely in
picking
out some of the fine details in the pictures.

Once the centre dome was in place I started working on the other features that
are in the 'camera side' view of the mosque.  I built only down one side of the

building then used Moray's Orbit option to copy and rotate each piece around
the
centre dome before doing the final render.

The fancy 'crinkled' domed roofs were acheived by squashing a torus, putting it
on edge then copying it through 360 degrees.
The top of each of the major domes and each minaret is crowned with a golden
spire,
the centre dome's spire is topped with a cresent.

Once the mosque was finished and the outer wall with the arched gateway were in

place, I started planting the trees.  The trees are one of only 2 objects in 
the render that are not native Moray objects (the other is at the base of the
minaret where the structure goes from round to square). The trees are
constructed
from numerous irregular shaped balls textured with a semi-transparent green
granite
texture.

The hedge garden, sidewalks, trash container and lamp posts were added and then
the
people. The people are very simple; a sphere for the head, cylinders for arms 
and legs and the body is a rounded cube.  At this point my husband made his
first
of three small contributions by adding 2 rounded cubes with a black finish to
give 
each of my people, a pair of shoes!

-- Elvish -- I have people in this one!

Then while I was "tree planting" my husband fixed up the foot paths and added
the
stairs of the eastern enterence to the mosque for a second contribution.

No view of the mosque looking towards the Sea of Mirmar would be complete
without
a collection of ships at anchor waiting to go into port.  I did the basic
outline
of the ships and my husband (with his expertise in the subject) polished them
up. (He did the fine detail such as doors, windows, lifeboats and navigation 
lights on the superstructure as well as a variety of funnels shapes and
Navigation 
Bridge Wings).

I Submit To The Standard Raytracing Competition Copyright
                 "The Blue Mosque" is 
Copyright(c)2001 Anne Gregory, All Rights Reserved World Wide.