TITLE: The Last Row
NAME: Ron Gow
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: rgow@lanset.com
TOPIC: Architecture
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: rows_rg.jpg
RENDERER USED: 

    PovRay 3.5


TOOLS USED: 

    Terragen, Poser 4, Poseray, 
    Tomtreem macro by Tom Aust & Gena Obukhov
    Architectural Field Camera macro by John Guthkelch
    Paintshop Pro 7 used for signature & conversion to .jpg


RENDER TIME: 

    6 hrs 47 min


HARDWARE USED: 

    Pentium IV 1.8gz
    512 mg RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

    Rowhouses on a summer evening as an ice cream man finishes 
    his daily rounds.

    Rowhouses originated in London around 1665, to fill the 
    massive housing shortages following the great London fire. 
    High density residential housing, quick to build and easy
    to service, this architectural style spread to Europe and 
    then to the rest of the world.
    
    Very few cities today do not have some form of rowhouses, 
    and in port cities like San Francisco and Boston where growth
    was very rapid, neighborhoods of rowhouses may extend many
    blocks back to back. Some have even attained some fame; it
    would be rare to see a movie set in Philadelphia or Baltimore 
    that did not have street scenes featuring rowhouses.
   


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

    
    Sky_sphere is a Terragen render. Man is Poser 4 converted with
    Poseray. Everything else is pure POV SDL.
    
    Macros, macros, and macros!
    I spent about three weeks writing the basic macros to build 
    walls, roofs, doors & windows, fences and sidewalks. 

    To do the walls I needed several different styles of wall,
    and I wanted to be able to use some brickwall textures I had
    made, so I based wall sections on a 1 Pov unit square. This
    let me use the bump maps as heightfields and just apply the 
    texture to the heightfield. It's not limited to heightfields
    though, anything that can be tiled and scaled to 1 pov unit 
    can be made into a wall.  The different styles are selected 
    with a #switch statement so it's very easy to add new styles.

    The rest of the macros followed the same basic idea using
    #switch so that 1 macro can do many styles. i.e. metal porch
    railings and the white picket fences are made by the same 
    macro.
    
    Then I wrote some construction macros that called the basic 
    macros and made actual buildings from data I put into arrays.
    These are called by macros that put the buildings into rows,
    add the fences and sidewalks and build up a whole block.
    
    Once the macros were done the scene came together pretty fast.

    I was going for a look like the old magazine covers from the 
    50s, but the vertical format caused some trouble at first due
    to the 'falling building' effect from my camera angle. Then 
    I remembered seeing some posts in the PovRay newsgroups about
    architectural field cameras, and found "Dr." John Guthkelch's 
    macro which is perfect!  Thank you, Doctor!!

    I'm quite happy with the final result, especially since I 
    wasn't sure I'd be able to finish by the deadline when I 
    started.  Not only did I finish, I got several very useful
    macros out of it!
    
    The streetlamps are a revised version of the one in my edge
    of the World entry in the Spectacular Landscapes round.

    Trees done with Gena Obukhov's mesh version of Tomtree.
 
    Textures are all by me.

    Ice cream man is a light_group. Everything else lit by sun or
    by streetlamps.

    No source, sorry, it was too messy.  I'll try to clean up 
    the macros and post them in the PovRay newsgroup.