TITLE: Medieval Castle at Night
NAME: Stephen M. Farrell
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: StephenF@whoever.com
WEBPAGE: N/A
TOPIC: Fortress
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: castle31.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray for Windows 3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    POV-Ray for Windows 3.1; Paint Shop Pro 6.02 (signature and
compression only)

RENDER TIME: 
    15 hours 45 minutes (Note render was done in three parts, so this
figure includes multiple parse and shut-down times.  If done as a single
render, I estimate it would have take about 3 hours less.) 

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium II 266; 384 mg RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

  A medieval castle at night (nothing too original here, I know, but a castle
was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the topic, and since
I've always wanted to try one, I figured this was the perfect time to do so.)


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

  (First off, let me point out that I accidentally put the wrong date on last
round's entry... it was created specifically for the competition that round. 
Sorry for any confusion this caused.)
  
  The first thing I did was create a simple castle shape with boxes and cones,
and used that to determine the camera angle.  I wanted the castle to dominate
the scene, and kind of loom over the viewer, and I think my angle works well
for that.

  For the actual castle, first I created a blob block, using a triple while loop
to place components along all three axes, with some randomization added in to
give some irregularities.  Then I used lots of loops to create the walls and
turrets, again using random to give the blocks varying colors and slight
variations along the z axis.  

  Both the pennants (atop the turrets) and the banners (on the walls) were
created using bezier patches I plotted the points for myself within POV-Ray. 
This is my first time creating bezier patches, and they're rather simple ones. 
The pennants looked pretty good from a top-down view, but the curves don't show
up very well from this angle.  I used three patches for each banner, in order
to get the curves I wanted.  Texturing was then added to enhance the cloth-like
effect.  For my first attempt, I don't think they look too bad. I created each
symbol using simple CSG, and then intersected each symbol with the original
patch used for the banner.  The symbols are meant to look rather simplistic...
I wanted them to look iconic, not especially detailed and realistic.

  This is also my first attempt at making grass that isn't simply a textured
box, and I like the way it turned out.  I created a mesh (consisting of only
one triangle), and used a double while loop to position multiple copies along
the x and y axes, with random used to vary the positioning along both axes,
rotation around all three axes, the height of the triangle, and the color of
each triangle.  The final grass consists of three sections, to create the path
and to cut down on the number of objects (there are 187,500 blades of grass.
Without grass, parse time is less than a minute... with grass, it increases to
over 40 minutes. ::sigh::)

  The sky is a sky_sphere, using a while loop to create layers of pigment, with
each iteration scaling and translating the pigment slightly, in order to
enhance the layered look.

  The treetop peeking over the outer wall on the right was a last-minute
addition.  I created a simple leaf-like mesh and rotated it multiple times and
ways (again with randomization), then lumped five of the resulting objects
together.  I've never had much luck with creating realistic-looking trees, but
I don't think this looks too bad, at least.

  That's about it, folks... thanks for all the comments last round - I was very
pleased to find out that some people were impressed by my blob figures. 
Comments and constructive criticism are always appreciated!