TITLE: The Edge NAME: Ron Gow COUNTRY: USA EMAIL: rgow@lanset.com TOPIC: Spectacular Landscapes COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: edge_rg.jpg RENDERER USED: Pov-Ray 3.5 TOOLS USED: Paintshop Pro 7 used for image maps and conversion to .jpg RENDER TIME: 28 min 20 sec HARDWARE USED: Pentium IV 1.8gz 512 mg RAM IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Who'd believe it, the most spectacular view on the planet, a million and a half tourists a day spend gazillions to stare for twenty minutes, and I get to see it every day! And they pay me! Although, somehow... it seems wrong... I mean sure, the tour's great, you get to see the wreckage of the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, a few flying saucers, occasionally a dragon shows up, but it's not as inspiring as when I was a kid... I think it changed when they put in the first mall and the apartment skyscrapers. Or maybe it was when they passed the state sponsored suicide law to try and ease the overpopulation and opened up Lover's Leap. I don't know. Sometimes, I can't help but wonder... what if Columbus had been right? Oh well... I guess I should be glad I got this job... I'd better get back to work, it's almost dawn. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: I started playing with Povray in August and had told myself I would try a Povray image this round. When the topic was announced I started racking my brain for something that would fit the topic and still be within my limited POV skills. After one particularly hard wrench, this idea fell out. This is my first real "scene" beside the tutorials. The streetlamp is my personal tutorial on lathe and sphere_sweep objects (and my first include file). The sky is an accident. The ground is my playing around with #while loops and rand() in the superellipsoid tutorial. The fence is my very first macro, takes the overall length and number of posts and gives a simple CSG fence centered on the origin. Telescopes are CSG with prisms and cylinders, set by another #while loop and another macro that randomly rotates the head of each one. Garbage can is CSG. Signs are image maps made in PSP. Textures are sweat and eyestrain (oh for a POV texture editor like Bryce's DTE! I do like the streetlamp and telescope textures, they just take too long to do.) I like POV lighting. Very easy to get what I want, especially with light groups. The streetlight is a lightgroup with global lights and so is the top sign. Radiosity was used. Source is a disaster, if I get around to cleaning it up I'll post it.