TITLE: "Valley of the Shadow"
NAME: Glenn McCarter
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: gmccarter@hotmail.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/gmccarter/Shadow
TOPIC: Warfare
COPYRIGHT: I submit to the standard raytracing competition copyright.
JPGFILE: shadow.jpg
ZIPFILE: shadow.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.5 beta

TOOLS USED: 

  POV-Ray editor
  Pencil & paper (lathes & splines)
  hamaPatch ( various patch objects )
  ColorPicker ( define RGB colors )
  TomTree include file
  Paint Shop Pro ( heightfields, convert image to JPEG, add copyright )

RENDER MUSIC: Yes, "Yours is no Disgrace"

RENDER TIME: 
    6h 38m

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium III - 800 mhz


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Hours after the ambush, a soldier pauses to rest.
The last of his buddies are buried now.
He needs to take shelter soon, although the enemy is still nearby.
It's going to be a long, cold night.


VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS:
Please try to view this image in a darkened environment to see maximum detail of
this night-time scene.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


This is my 15th entry into the IRTC.  Some images begin as a detailed vision but
become difficult to execute.  This one was nearly the opposite -- a simple idea
that flowed and expanded as I developed it.  The initial idea was just this: a
night scene with a soldier pausing over a freshly-dug grave, with dogtags
visible in the foreground.  That's it.  Everything else was added to enhance
this setup.

Composition
-----------
Because this is nearly four scenes in one (foreground, soldier, road, and
background) I took special care in composition and lighting to bring the
elements together, including using a very limited color palette.
This was not originally intended to be a winter scene.  But early in the scene
development, I added snow to the ground, and liked the contrasts.  Plenty of
diagonal lines in the scene keep the composition lively.

Lighting
--------
There are eight light sources, in addition to the flashlight.  Each zone of the
scene has at least one main spotlight, coming from a plausible source, such as
the moon or a nearby building or vehicle.  Some of the lights are area_lights
to soften shadows.  Everything is divided into light groups, which
significantly speeds rendering time.  The only global light source here is the
moon.

Modeling
--------
The soldier is upgrade of my "blobman" figure used in a few previous scenes.
The terrain is a series of height_fields made in Paint Shop Pro, some with an
image_map added.  The original images have up to six layers to create features
such as tire tracks and material maps.
The bridge is a single-span, wrought iron, pin-connected Pratt-type CSG truss
bridge supported by stone abutments.
The "deuce-and-a-half" truck is CSG steel and rubber blobs, with a cab mangled
in hamaPatch and media smoke.
The dogtags are height_fields, based on scans of actual dogtags.
The rifle is a Springfield M1 Garand, a mix of primitives and patch elements.
The wood box is made of a bunch of height_fields, mostly.
The map was folded in hamaPatch, and has a scan of an actual tactical map.
The building is a whole lot of Constructive (and Destructive) Solid Geometry.

All the source files necessary to re-create the image are included in the zip
file.  I hand-coded roughly 3,000 lines to produce this scene, which doesn't
count the patches and image files.  I used several new POV-Ray 3.5 features in
the scene: sphere_sweeps and splines, functions and isosurfaces, trace() and
light_groups.  For more information on the making of this image, please visit
http://www.geocities.com/gmccarter/Shadow.

I enjoyed creating this image.  I hope you enjoy viewing and commenting on it.

Thanks to
---------
http://www.astory.com/deuce/ -- for great photos of military trucks.
Ebay sellers -- for photo reference for several items modeled in the scene.
Reusser and Michael Zier -- for gaussian distribution methods.

And a big thanks to the POV-Team for improving what was already the best free
renderer on the planet!