TITLE: The Dark Tower
NAME: Teri Hoskins
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: isokesa@yahoo.com
TOPIC: Fantasy and Mystic
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: darktowe.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    Gimp, Poser4, Amapi3D

RENDER TIME: 


HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium II w/256K ram


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    Will the Dark Man catch sight of Roland and his friends as
they pass through the fields of roses on their way to the Dark Tower? Or will
the "grapefruit" turn dark in time?

Yes, I like Stephen King. I wish he'd hurry up and write the next book in the
Dark Tower/Gunslinger series...sigh...




DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

I had a general idea of what I wanted so I started with the landscape inside the
globe. There are about 3 heightfields in use. I made them all by hand with
Gimp, including the image maps. I tried about 3 different things for the rose
field and ended up with a hieghtfield.  

The tower is csg. As is the crystal ball and the table.

Getting all that land into a glass ball was a major headache...the scale for
this picture would give you the heebie-jeebies...but i won't torture anyone
with the pov file :)

The people were made with Poser4. 

I used Amapi to create the lump that suggests the Dark Man's robe :)

I used a lot of things I haven't played with much so far. I actually changed the
ini settings and messed with a different command in the render box. I rendered
it at 800x600 AA0.3  using "Sampling_Method=2".

Once again lighting was my biggest hassle.
The crystal ball, with the landscape inside is the main lightsource. I tried to
get it to "glow" but I couldn't get a halo effect to show up close to the
glass...it is pretty close to what I had pictured in my head though...so I'm
happy overall.

Hope you like it.
Comments are always welcome. I'd like to think I might be getting better as time
goes on, feedback helps.

Teri