TITLE: Intestinal Parasites Playing Poker
NAME: Sherry K. Shaw
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: tenmoons@aol.com
WEBPAGE: http://members.aol.com/pshawpsoft/
TOPIC: Worlds Within Worlds
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: sks_ippp.jpg
ZIPFILE: sks_ippp.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray

TOOLS USED: 
    BioForm for Windows, Adobe PhotoDeluxe, Paint Shop Pro, under Win
95

RENDER TIME: 
    45m 27s

HARDWARE USED: 
    P2, 266 mhz, 96 mg, 4 mg video card, pencil


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    "Hmm, 'Worlds Within Worlds,'" I said to myself. "Thoughts
in the mind--spirit wrapped in flesh--'Oh, for a muse of fire...'  Aha! 
Intestinal parasites!"  Then I spent a day or two wandering around trying to
complete a phrase beginning with the words "Intestinal Parasites."  "'On
Parade'--'Of the World'--'Throughout the Ages'...  Aha!  'Playing Poker'!"
     "Intestinal Parasites Playing Poker" is a parody of "A Friend in Need," one
of a series of paintings by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, best known today for
his depictions of dogs playing poker, shooting pool, getting arrested, and
other manly pursuits.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 
    I started by building the table,
light fixture, and chairs and placing them more or less in position.  Then I
repeatedly checked the result (rendered, loaded result into PhotoDeluxe at 50%
transparency, laid it on top of a copy of "A friend in Need" to see how well it
matched) and fiddled with the scene (moved objects, adjusted camera position
and angle) until everything was pretty well lined up.  (Ultimately, the
physical differences between dogs and intestinal parasites required moving some
things around slightly, but it's still pretty close.)
     The intestinal wall is a slightly wobbly line of tori (or "donuts"), coated
with a lovely, gutlike marble texture and normal, and cut away on the front so
the camera would fit (unlike real colonoscopy, which uses fiberoptics).
     The picture frame and the light fixture are triangle meshes, designed with
an old but reliable modeler called a "pencil."  (I've included the INC file for
the light, "SKS_HexLight.inc," as a demonstration of (a) how to use trig to
build a simple hexagonal object, and (b) why too much caffeine is bad for
you.)
     The wood textures are based on textures from "woods.inc" (wish I could
remember which ones...) and then tweaked somewhat.  The beer mug texture is
basically the "excellent lead crystal" from "glass.inc."  Making the
mugs-o-beer was odd but entertaining.  I made a mug object (just CSG with the
"lead crystal" texture and interior), a beer object (transparent cylinder with
interior media using a leopard color_map in the density to make the bubbles),
and a head object (short cylinder with a similar pattern, in white); stuck the
head on the beer; and plopped the assembled beer into the mug.  Huh.  Mug alone
looks OK.  Beer alone looks OK.  Beer in mug is just...wrong.  Fiddled with
textures and interiors.  Finally pounded self on forehead, shouted
imprecations, and scaled beer to 0.999 of inside mug size.  Voila!  Totally
black beer!  Well, at least it was different.  Thought about it for a moment,
set max_trace_level to 8, and voila!  Beer!  And I wish I had one right now. 
("SKS_Beer.inc" includes code both for mugs-o-beer and beer bottles.)
     The mouth parts of the green guys and the overall body shape of the two
yellow Giardia were (loosely) based on images found on an Internet parasitology
site (http://www.life.sci.qut.edu.au/).  The lavender liver fluke was based on
vague memories of a high school biology text and an X-Files episode.  The
tapeworm (far left) is totally imaginary.  The bodies of the parasites are
blobs (except for the tapeworm, who's just a string of flattened spheres).  The
tentacles (flagella?) of the Giardia are strings of little spheres and were
built with BioForm.
     The card faces and backs, the beer bottle labels, and the clock face are
image maps and were drawn in PhotoDeluxe.  (In case you're curious, the beer is
labeled "Old Gastro-Enteritis.")  Those images and the two paintings on the
wall were then converted from JPG to PPM format with Paint Shop Pro.  I used
PhotoDeluxe to add the title, copyright, and URL lines, and PSP to convert the
finished image from BMP to JPG format (72 DPI, compression level 7).
     The painting in the center is "Whaler off the Vineyard--Outward Bound" by
William Bradford (from 1859) and came from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
site (http://www.nmaa.si.edu/).  The partly-visible painting at far left is, of
course, "A Friend in Need" by C. M. Coolidge.