TITLE: The Robe
NAME: David A.R. Wallace
COUNTRY: U.S.A.
EMAIL: darwallace@earthlink.net
WEBPAGE: N/A
TOPIC: Worship
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: robe.jpg
ZIPFILE: robe.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    MegaPOV 0.6/0.7

TOOLS USED: 
    Paint Shop Pro (for JPEG conversion)

RENDER TIME: 
    34 00 39

HARDWARE USED: 
    AMD K6-2 400, 96 MB RAM.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


A robe drapes over an organ bench near the stage in front of the
sanctuary.  Altar railings with tapestries and floor cushions can be
seen through the iron safety railing.  The organ, situated in an
orchestral pit with rows for choir or instrumentalists in front, has a
music stand and a stone snake statue on it.  The scene is lighted by
fixtures mounted on the beams and by candelabras just in front of the
stage near the stairways.

This is the second image of mine to make use of my parametric surface
generator, which I have updated to accommodate MegaPOV's UV-mapped
meshes.  The pillows are paired parametric surfaces (top and bottom).
The robe itself uses three (body and two sleeves).  The tapestries use
two types of surfaces (body and tassels).  The snake statue uses five
distinct parametric surfaces (body, neck, and three jaws) and an
isosurface for the base.  The organ legs and music stand swirls are also
parametric.

I did bring in some specialized textures from the Absolute Background
Textures Archive (ABTA) for a few applications.  The sanctuary floor,
tapestry body, and stage carpet have ABTA-sourced image-map textures.

This is a far more complete scene than any one picture like this can
provide; this photo is designed to highlight the robe.  A series of
pictures would be necessary to properly show such things as the pews,
the stage, the lights, the organ, and the roof.  

If there is any real shortcoming in this image it would involve the
lighting.  Specifically, the candle flames are so bright that they cause
the organ and its contents to wash out somewhat.  I noticed this on the
last day before the deadline and given the time constraints and long
rendering time I could not fix them.  The problem is technically simple:
the candle light sources can be diminished via their color and/or fade 
distance.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

The POV Team for their excellent, and free, raytracing program.
Nathan Kopp for his POV-Ray add-on, MegaPOV.
The Absolute Background Textures Archive for several image-maps.