TITLE: graveyar
NAME: Josh Washburne
COUNTRY: US of A
EMAIL: poss_98@juno.com
WEBPAGE: http://rgreen.hn.org 81/~josh/graveyard/
TOPIC: Loneliness
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: graveyar.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.5

TOOLS USED: 
    "MakeTree" & "MakeGrass" macros by Gilles Tran, Photoshop 7

RENDER TIME: 
    Total Time 100 hours 3 minutes 28.0 seconds (approx. 4 days. .
.)

HARDWARE USED: 
    AMD Athlon 1.4ghz, 512mb RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


        A lonely butterfly resting in an abandoned graveyard--the ultimate place
of loneliness. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


        I was inspired to create this image on vacation when I was out at the
Little Bighorn National 
        Cemetery.  I didn't know about the current topic of the IRTC at the
time, but when the image 
        was in it's growing stages, I decided that I would like to submit my
first ever IRTC rendering.  
        Luckilly, the current topic fit very well with a graveyard and it gave
me more ideas to add to 
        the scene.

        If you wish to see the pics that inspired me, check out the website
posted. . .

        To keep everything nice and short, I'll just list the various objects
and how I made them.

        ------------

        Trees:
        ------
        These were created using Gilles Tran's excellent MakeTree macro.  The
only thing that I had issues
        with was with the textures.  I grabbed a good bark texture off the
internet, and put it on the tree
        to the right (in front of you).  It looked excellent there, but if you
look at the other trees in the
        distance, the texture is misaligned going up the various branches.  Oh
well. . . ::sigh::

        Grass:
        ------
        Again, another macro by Gilles Tran.  This time I wanted it to be placed
on an isosurface to give it a
        true hill effect.  So I used POV-Ray's new "trace" function. . .that did
the job very well.  The color
        of the grass is what messed me up a lot.  Getting it to match the
background wasn't easy.  It came out
        well though.

        Background:
        -----------
        I was looking for a nice picture to put in the background to give the
scene more realism and depth.
        I couldn't find one until ironically I used one of the pictures I took
of the Little Bighorn Battlefield.
        That worked the best, so I kept it.

        Tombstones:
        -----------
        These are a crazy concoction made with CSG.  Each tombstone is created,
then it choose a random first name
        and random last name, chisled it into the stone, and finally took a
random birth date and death date and
        chisled that in as well.  If your name appears on here, it's purely by
chance.  Blame POV-Ray's random
        seed generator ; ) Once the tombstone was all designed, it rotated just
slightly in any direction and was
        placed on the isosurface using the "trace" function.

        Butterfly:
        ----------
        I could get into my story about images and their alpha channels, but I
won't. I spent a good 5 hours
        trying to get the alpha channel to work on a TGA file, but nothing
worked.  So I just gave up and used
        a simple PNG with common transparency. . .sheesh.  Anyways, the
butterfly wings were found with a simple
        search under Google Image Search.  The rest from there should be easy to
figure out.

        -----------

        Overall, the scene contained 276624 frame level objects; 1 infinite. And
used about 857034166 bytes of my
        memory. . .ouch. . .

        It was a fun project and I hope you enjoy the pic as much as I enjoyed
making it. : )