TITLE: The Twilight Gate
NAME: Stephen M. Farrell
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: StephenF@whoever.com
WEBPAGE: n/a
TOPIC: Decay
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: twilight.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray for Windows 3.5

TOOLS USED: 
    POV-Ray for Windows 3.5; Paint Shop Pro 7 (for signature and jpg
conversion)

RENDER TIME: 
    Way too long! - 6 days 15 hrs 50 min

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 4 2.53 GHz; 1 GB RAM



IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


  An old house, ravaged by the forces of time and nature....



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


  Not my best work, I'm afraid, and the render time is a bit much.  The spot
where the roads join doesn't look that good... I tried my best to get it to
look better, but after spending three days on it had to give it up as a lost
cause.  The scene could also use more decay.  I am happy with the way the stone
walls turned out, and the overall mood works well, I think.

  My first attempt at using the stacked planes technique for the sky.  Turned
out better than I expected... not great, but not bad.  Hopefully I can get
better at it as I use it more.  I used a leopard pattern for the pigment, which
resulted in an unfortunate regularity to the cloud placement, but the scene
elements seem to disguise it somewhat.

  Isosurfaces - for the stone walls and roads.  Something else I haven't worked
with very much.  I tried using a single isosurface for the main wall, but
couldn't get a texture to align correctly with the stones and mortar.  So I
used a rounded box for the mortar part, and then imbedded a second rounded box
(using a crackle pattern to get the stones) inside the first one.  Seems to
have worked pretty well.  Cutting sections out of the tops of the walls doesn't
seem to have worked so well... the cuts look much too defined and obvious.

  The gates are simple csg with a rust texture applied, and look a lot better
than I expected them too.  (The low lighting helps a lot!)

  The grass uses meshes and while loops to place the individual blades.  I've
used this technique before, and am satisfied with it, but this time I had to
figure out how to write a while loop to place some blades in a triangular
pattern (in the angles where the roads join).  Took me a while to figure out
the math to do this, but it looks like it worked.

  The house is pretty much pure csg, using a lot of while loops to place the
various components.  I used macros to control how some of the pieces are placed
(or not placed, as the case may be).  The front steps stand out as looking
undecayed compared to the rest of the house.  I meant to go back and work on
them more, but simply ran out of time.

  The lighting could probably use some work.  I set up basic lighting early in
the creation process, and planned to go back once the scene was finished and
make it better.  But the huge render time made it difficult to do so.  I
actually think it works pretty well, but could probably use some tweaking.

  The moral of this scene, I think, is it's best not to combine all your
weaknesses into a single scene.  ::grin::

  As usual, all comments/criticisms definitely appreciated!