TITLE: Sky Loft
NAME: Ken Ayers
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: keayers@columbus.rr.com
WEBPAGE: http://home.columbus.rr.com/keayers/index.html
TOPIC: Surrealism
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: skyloft.jpg
ZIPFILE: skyloft.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1g

TOOLS USED: 
    Corel PhotoPaint (Conversion to JPEG)

RENDER TIME: 
    281 seconds

HARDWARE USED: 
    HP Pavilion, 1.0 GHz AMD Athlon, 256Mb RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Location, location, location ... 

What real estate agent wouldn't die to list a nice little
loft with this view!

"Sky Loft" was inspired by my desire to escape the tiny,
one-bedroom apartment I lived in at the time.  So, I
thought: "If I'm going to escape, why not do it in
grand style!"

Besides the obvious paradox, notice that the corner window
looks out onto a nighttime sky.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


Parts of "Sky Loft" had their beginnings back in POV-Ray
Version 2.1 (I think it was).  At that time, without the
benefit of the control directives - especially #while loops,
I wrote C-programs, which generated include files, for things
that repeated ... like the spiral staircase and the glass
sculpture, here.

Other than that, everything is pretty much straight CSG.

Finally, since I'm a programmer by profession, you'll
probably notice a good bit of programming structure in
the accompanying source files.  My "big thing" is to
define a few key values, up front, and make as many
other object parameters as possible be derived from
those few values.  This allows me to make sweeping
changes in the scene, simply by changing a few key
variables.

This general rule, which is also a very good rule in
writing computer programs, has led me to develop a
fairly sophisticated technique for managing POV-Ray's
animation clock, when doing animations.  If you're
interested, check out the "POV-Ray Animation Tutorial"
on my website.