TITLE: 3 Fireflies NAME: Neal Delfeld COUNTRY: USA EMAIL: delfeld@yahoo.com TOPIC: Insects and Spiders COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: 3fiflies.jpg RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.1e TOOLS USED: Paint Shop Pro 4, a computer. RENDER TIME: 2 minutes HARDWARE USED: Microsoft-based IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Three fireflies over a foggy river. Color is defined as a certain wavelength range within light. The visible range is from white to black. The range is limited to human sight, and there are various hue separations within the spectrum. These separations are arbitrary until a meaning is applied. One distinction that becomes important is "line". A line is a contrast between values within or between hues. At this point, color gains a meaning: it separates space. These spaces are arbitrary, too. Putting them together in certain ways creates rhythms within a 2D space, and can imitate actual motion. Spaces are not only created by line, but also can be made with variations of hue or value. Fireflies contain both line and variation spaces within their form: bright light and chemical diffusions. They use this to their advantage to attract a mate, helping to encourage reproduction. Insects generally spend their lives eating and mating, or striving to do those two things. The essence of a firefly's being is both clearly defined and structured, and limited within certain, yet vague, interests. Though these distinctions and limits exist, each firefly is a singular being, without necessary reliance on the conditions of its origins. This is shown in that not all fireflies light up when captured in a jar, though do immediately on release. This may not be choice in the same terms that humans can achieve, but independence from intrinsic limits still exists. That is, they are still beings within a universe which is mostly non-existence. This description is meant to clarify the more difficult language of imagery. It is difficult only because there is no base set of rules that everyone follows (or should follow) when creating or viewing an image. Rather, each image must establish and hold to its own criteria. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Shadowless background plane, gradient X texture_map within a gradient Y texture_map. Formula for connecting cylinders and spheres to make the bar-shapes individually. Simple shapes for the fireflies, with a media for the light. Learned that media must be exterior of a plane in POV-Ray. 3 lights in front of the pipes, behind the camera. Border is a high-contrast version of the image, enlarged and put behind the original.