TITLE: Beacon

NAME: Sebastian "Chano" Stratb_cker
COUNTRY: Germany

EMAIL: stratbue@in.tum.de
WEBPAGE: www.chano.de

TOPIC: Landscapes
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: beacon.jpg
ZIPFILE: beacon.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    povray 3.5


TOOLS USED: 
    none


RENDER TIME: 
    20h 46 min


HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium III at 0.6 GHz


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

A red-glowing beacon, sticking in the dusty surface of a moon that 
surrounds an earth-like planet.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

Since I had no possibilities to create realistic plants or other
natural shapes, using only the POV-Raytracer, I decided to build 
a rather lifeless environment. So I remembered the photographs of 
the rising earth, that were shot by astronauts on the moon : 
bright shining moon dust, hard shadows thrown by rocks and the blue 
tiny planet on the horizon. 
The moon was made quickly out of an iso-sphere, and also the 
randomly placed rocks were soon looking quite realistic. But after
the first test renders, I recognized a nasty problem. The dark side 
of the rocks (because I only used one light source : the sun) looked 
extremely flat and I couldn't manage it to use radiosity with good 
results taking render-time that ranged within a week. 
The solution of this problem came with the POV-Ray logo, which I had 
planned to put in my scene anyway. So I applied a glass material on it, 
and placed a red glow in the center of the sphere. Now I had my flat 
spots disappearing and by the way I could use the photons feature for 
the glass logo.
Even if my scene doesn't exactly fit the "landscape topic", I think it 
shows an important aspect of nature : the huge contrast between 
any living planet and the remaining dead matter in this universe.
So I look at the pov logo as a beacon that leads you to a stand point 
far away from human activity, where you can consider things from a certain 
distance.

Technical remarks

-the star texture is taken from "stars.inc" and applied on a hollow sphere
-moon,rocks, planet and clouds are isosurface objects, functions are taken from
"functions.inc"
-the relief of the moon surface is a combination of various functions,
describing 
 an isosurface object like this : f_sphere - f_agate * f_noise3d 
-similarly the rocks are formed : f_sphere - f_hetero_mf- f_agate * f_noise3d
 (for further details see the povray source file "beacon.pov")
-the planet is a union of various spheres 
-the relief of the land is done by an isosurface
-the sea is just a blue sphere, with little dents in the normal
-the thin clouds are provided by a texture from "skies.inc"
-the fat clouds are a CSG difference of an isosurface similar to the functions
shown above, 
 and a sphere, that is bigger than the "sea sphere" to make them hover in the
atmosphere.
-the atmosphere itself is a hollow sphere having media inside with blue
scattering  
-the beacon is originally ment to be the official POV-Ray logo. I only changed 
 the sphere into a hollow one, and put a light source in it. The caustic light
effects
 are provided by a photon map, which is saved in the "beacon.ph" file.