TITLE: Glass Armonica
NAME: Kyle Johnson
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: hobbes@gate.net
TOPIC: Music
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: armonica.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.6.1a

TOOLS USED: 
    Wings 3D 0.98.29b, Gimp 2.2 to scale the image and add text

RENDER TIME: 
    32 hours

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 4; 2.0 GHz; 1.0 GB RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Benjamin Franklin invented the Glass Armonica in the late 1700_s.  It produces
a haunting musical sound using the same concept as running a moist finger 
around the rim of a wine glass.  Both Mozart and Beethoven composed music 
specifically for the Armonica.  A web search for _Glass Armonica_ will produce
quite a bit of detailed information for those that are interested.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


This is my first entry to the IRTC.  I learned much while producing this image,
like try to have the entire composition in mind before starting to work on the
image.  That would have saved me allot of time working on the details that you
really can_t see in the final image!  Anyway_

I tried to get some of the difficult tasks out of the way right up front.  I
created the glass bowls first, initially using an isosurface, then instead 
ended up using CSG when the isosurface bowls proved to render much too slowly.
The bowls are not simply scaled; the glass thickness remains consistent as well
as the diameter of the neck of the bowls.  I achieved this by writing a macro
to calculate the appropriate values for each component that makes up the bowl.

I then created the cork stoppers that hold the bowls on the shaft.  This is one
area where I ended up spending too much time creating a nice looking isosurface
cork, only to replace it with CSG using a procedural texture in the end.  

Next came the legs, which I created in Wings.  I built the rest of the cabinet
using CSG on top of the legs.  The drawer pulls are height fields with sphere
sweeps for the handles.  The bolt heads are height fields.  The bolt heads have
raised lettering, another area where time was unnecessarily spent.

After I complete basic construction of the Armonica, I decided to place it
in a basic Victorian style setting, so I completed the walls, wallpaper,
wainscoting, floor and lighting at that time.

I must give credit to http://imageafter.com and 
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/ for their wonderful free textures, some
of which were used for several of the metal objects in the image.

Additionally, thanks very much to Tony at http://victorianwallpaper.com for 
permission to use one of their images for the wallpaper in the scene.