TITLE: The Diving Challenge.
NAME: Hildur Kolbrun Andresdottir
COUNTRY: Iceland
EMAIL: hildurka@simnet.is
WEBPAGE: http://www.simnet.is/hildurka/
TOPIC: Epic Proportions
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: diving.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.5

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray 3.5, Photoshop for signature, gamma correction and file
conversion, Poser, Poseray, Corel Draw.

RENDER TIME: 
    1d11h09m03s

HARDWARE USED: 
    Amd Athlon 1200 mHz, 512 mb RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


I base this image on a childhood memory. I used to go often to the swimming hall
near my school. I would watch in awe as the older kids were jumping off the
diving board which seemed exceptionally huge at the time.  
One day I decided to gather enough courage to climb on top of it. I must have
been eight or nine and was definitely a good swimmer.
I remember standing there for a while preparing to jump, but in the last moment
I lost my nerve. I felt embarassed as I climbed down again as I was worried
that the others were watching. But in my memory, time seemed to stand still
during this short moment and I felt completely alone in the world. 
I went the other day to take a look, and was surprised to see how small the hall
and the diving board really is. I asked around and everybody agrees that the
diving board used to be a real challenge. 
When I was fifteen I came back and then finally took the dive. Once was enough.
The diving board had been conquered.
So the boy in my image could be any of all these kids who share my experience. 
Funny how things seem to shrink when you get older. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


I started this scene only two weeks ago, and I wasn_t sure I could finish in
time, especially when the rendering dramatically slowed down with the water
refractions/reflections.

The placement of the sunlight in the scene is not correct according to reality,
it_s based of my memories from this place. It seemes I have rotated this
building in my head by 180 degrees. But I decided to recreate the atmosphere
the way I remember it.
I used one distant area light for sunlight along with a sky sphere to give the
right daylight atmosphere. Inside the building there are few faint area lights,
placed like the lamps are in reality. So most of the light in the hall is
indirect lit by the sky through all the windows, also those that are not in
view. 

The main hall structure and the diving board are based on photos from this place
I found on the internet. 

Most of the modeling is CSG_s. I used image maps, previously rendered from a
seperate file to texture the brown tiles to speed up rendering times. For the
white and turquise tiles around the pool I used a brick texture with a
hollow/transparent mortar and a smaller cube inside with the mortar texture. 

I used a heightfield for the water surface, it_s only slightly bending to make
the bigger "waves" and the texture has a normal for the tiny ones. The bottom
of the pool seems to bend upwards away from the camera, this is due to water
IOR/refraction and seemes to be accurate, according to photos of the pool taken
from a similar angle. 

The boy is a Poser model, converted to Moray in Poseray. After being imported to
Moray I converted the model once more to a Tmesh for texturing through Moray_s
new mesh editing feature. The UV map creation option turned out to be highly
unstable, crashing my system repeatedly, so I ended up using simple procedural
texturing, directly texturing the separate faces of the mesh. 

The clock face is an image map created in Corel Draw. The clouds and sky is an
image map coming from Rune S. Johansen_s Fastsky file
(http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk), slightly altered and rendered with a spherical
camera, then mapped directly onto the sky sphere. Thanks (tusind tak) Rune for
a an easy and fast sky solution.

I wanted to set radiosity higher for slightly more accurate results, but I ran
out of time.

No source I_m afraid, too big, too messy.