EMAIL: StephenF@whoever.com
NAME: Stephen M. Farrell
TOPIC: Decay
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: The Twilight Gate
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: n/a
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!