TITLE: Easter Finest
NAME: M Daugherty
EMAIL: gromit@ix.netcom.com
TOPIC: Out of Place
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: easter_f.jpg
ZIPFILE: easter_f.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.6

TOOLS USED: 
    Mesh modeling Anim8or 3d, Art of Illusion, Wings 3d. Image
conversion: Paintshop Pro

RENDER TIME: 
    36m 2s

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 4M 2.4 GHz


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


For centuries, the enigmatic moai (statues) of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) have
stood in silent rows, gazes turned to the distant horizon.  They bear the
unending cycles of harsh wind and sun with grim, impassive determination _ all
that is, save one...


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


With apologies to the amazing craftsmen of Rapa Nui who created these wonderful
relics!

The moai are fairly simple mesh objects with a layered texture.  I created these
in a combination of Anim8or, Art of Illusion and Wings 3d (I was getting my
feet wet at 3d modeling and was trying out various programs).  For references,
I used some photos of the moai that I found on the web.  The sunglasses are
another mesh object _ based loosely on a _Blues Brothers_ style.  Aside from
the obvious, the 3rd moai is slightly out of position in the row _ as suits
him!

The hillside is an isosurface _ although given the covering of vegetation, a
simpler primitive probably would have worked as well.  The grass is a
collection of mesh objects, placed using the Trace macro.  There are 3 basic
grass blades, which are multiplied for 10 different textures.  I used a pigment
function (bozo) to generate a look up function for assigning textures based on
the X-Z coordinates.  The look up table has a little _turbulence_ in the
entries so that the colors are scattered a little.  The pigment function also
adjusts the height, so that some patches are taller (and greener) than others. 
I kept trying to adjust the pigments of the grass, until I finally just put
them in a separate light group.  The parse time for all the grass and textures
is the biggest piece of the total render time.  There are probably much better
ways to do this.

The sea is a basic plane, with a little bit of fog to blend the color to the
horizon.  The sky is a simple sky sphere with a two color gradient.  I would
have liked to do a more sophisticated set of clouds but settled for using a
stock texture (T_Clouds1) from skies.inc over a plane.

I_m a newbie to the IRTC and would like to thank all those talented folks who
have made their tips, tricks, and source code available.