TITLE: Splat
NAME: M. R. Seavey
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: mcv001@gmail.com
TOPIC: Catastrophe
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: splat.jpg
ZIPFILE: splat.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.6

TOOLS USED: 
    none

RENDER TIME: 
    2 hours 31 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium4-2.5Ghz


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Poor little ant . . .

I have spent short passing periods playing with PovRay in the past,
and, while still a rank beginner, have recently had the chance to spend
more time with the program and it's excellent help and on-line support
resource.

I found myself with an image with a CSG tandem bike in a shed 
which finally, well prehaps only in my opinion, was  good enough to submit
to the IRTC.  Then I read both the rules and the topic for April 2005.
My image did not qualify.  Then I read " . . . of course re-use good ideas
and even objects from past image that you have created. "  Now all I had to
do was come up with a catastrophe idea.

I had been adding detail to the "tandem shed" Pov scene file, helmets,
water bottles, nails in the wall, a calendar from
http://www.wikipov.org/ow.asp?MakeCalendar.  I noticed how my
"3 scaled spheres" bicycle floor pump handle looked a bit like 
an ant's body, so in my notes for scene additions, I added "ants".        



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 



Now at first the ants where all black.  I thought the ant-splat should
have a little bit of "bug juice" color. Red was used mostly because 
it fits the rest of the scene, I did not go out andsteps on ants
to see what is really correct. 

In coloring the squished ant red, I came to like the effect on the
healther ants, so they are not just black in the submited image.
Layer textures and pigments are our friends!

The ant, ant_splat, wall, 48 spoke bike wheel, and floor pump are
all original include files.  The bike wheel was inspired by one in
"Hotenuf" by Kerwin D Kanago, IRTC JULY-August 1996.

We are too close to the wall to show it in this scene, but multiple 
wall studs look much more realistic when one translates the applied textures
a random amount on each. Most things in the real world are not identical.
The ants ( accept for Mr. Squished ) in this scene are identical, but
they are placed uneven and camera perspective also makes them look
at least a bit varied.  I never could tell one from another.

Render time might have been lower if radiosity was not used and
freecell not played while occasionally peeking at progress.

Irafview was used to adjust gamma and brightness, and to convert
the submitted image to a jpeg under 250KB.

IRTC size rules make it tough on any image with wood and
concrete textures, as they don't seem to compress well in jpg files,
had to compress down to 85% quality.

I am sorry for the one ant, but I do hope most of the catastrophes
we face are small and that we look for the humor in them if at
all possible.

M. R. Seavey, April 2005