TITLE: Aha!
NAME: James Moore
COUNTRY: US
EMAIL: jtm11@bellsouth.net
TOPIC: Frozen Moment
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: aha.jpg
ZIPFILE: aha.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.5

TOOLS USED: 
    Povray, Poser, Paintshop Pro for jpg conversion

RENDER TIME: 
    50 hrs

HARDWARE USED: 
    Athlon XP 1.6 GHz, 1 GB RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

...the unique moment in time when, in trying to understand a complex situation,
the swirl of thoughts suddenly forms an idea and the light shines, revealing
the answer.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

Another pretty simple image using mainly CSG objects & a poser model.  The long
render time was due to the max trace level needed to bring out all the
reflections.

The background is just a hollow box with an agate pigment pattern and a wrinkle
normal pattern with a little reflection thrown in.  The clock is just a torus
for the outer ring, a black cylinder for the face and boxes & text objects for
the minute marks, numbers & hands covered by a sphere with a glass texture to
produce the reflections.

The head is the reflection of a poser model with a glass finish & no refraction
to avoid distorting the reflection of the lightbulb & swirl.  The swirl was
made using an emitting media.  I started with several sphere sweeps to make the
basic shape of the swirl, & used it as an object pattern for the media density
of the head.  The color & feathering were done using multiple density patterns.
 It lost some of the detail in the reflection, it looks more like a spiral
galaxy when the object is actually in the camera's angle.

The lightbulb in the head is a sphere sweep with a scattering & emitting media
for brightness, another sphere sweep for the filament and a cylinder for the
base.

As always, any comments, criticism or advice is greatly appreciated.