EMAIL: 76744,1405@Compuserve.Com NAME: Doug Allen TOPIC: Time COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. RENDERER USED: Pov-Ray 3.0.beta.7 TOOLS USED: PC Paintbrush 3.0 RENDER TIME: 40.35 Minutes HARDWARE USED: Pentium-75 IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The human compulsion to trace time over increasingly smaller intervals and more at their convenience is the subject of this picture. Methods of time-keeping, starting from Top-Left and moving clockwise, have been: The Sun, Sundials, Hourglasses, Pocket Watches (analog devices), and Wrist Watches (digital devices). The final stage, presumably, would be microchips integrated into the nervous system for instant access time keeping to more precision than microseconds. In the middle the Everman monitors the human compulsion. This image is intended to inspire thought on the subject of timekeeping. Whether it be in the form of someone going out and inventing the "Intel Outside 80886", or starting a campaign against electronics assimilation, or just starting research to do a history report on the subject, this image does not make a comment on the perceived evolution of timekeeping. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: This image contains ten individual models: The sun, the sundial, hourglass, pocket watch, wrist watch, the technically augmented head, the Everman, the starburst in front of him, and the hands of the Everclock. The six items which compose the face of the Everclock are each two Pov-units across they all stand at a radius of 3 units from the origin and have been rotated to lessen the effect of perspective on them. In other words, so they all face the camera. The Sun: The sun is a basic Pov-Ray 3.0 halo which fades from bright yellow at the corona to dark red on the horizons. It also consists of a spotlight shining directly below to illuminate the sundial. No object could be simpler. The Sundial: The sundial is basically made of a cylinder and half of a box. Each of the numbers around the edges is made from scaled and rotated boxes which are subtracted from the cylinder. The texture is an onion pattern texture made up of a light crackle normal at the center, and a heavier one at the edges, making it look like the sundial is dented at the edges but is relatively unmarred at the center. The sundial is tilted upwards slightly to catch some of the rays of the sun. The Hourglass: The bases of the hourglass are just thin spheres. The spires along the sides which look like spirals really are not. I created the illusion by scaling a bunch of spheres and rotating them at 30 degree angles to each other. I borrowed the pigment for the wood from the standard Pov-Ray Library woods.inc. It is the pigment from T_Wood34 scaled a little and a specular finish. The Glass is composed of two spheres, two cones, and a cylinder merged together. The glass pigment is Black and 95% transparent. It has a very slight index of refraction of 1.05 and has 20% reflection applied to it. The most interesting part of the hourglass, the sand, was made through a technique I call Selection. The shape of the hourglass is copied, scaled slightly smaller, and all of the necessary portions are 'cut out' of the smaller copy. Then I applied a very tiny bozo normal to the sand to make the dark spots appear. I scaled it longer in the part of the sand in the middle to give the impression that it is falling. This model also appears by itself in the Graphdev forum on CompuServe in the image 'SpaceTime'. The images name is 4D.JPG. The Pocket Watch: The main body of the pocket watch is made of only three spheres: one gold, one white, and one transparent. The numbers around the edges are the Pov-Ray Text object using the Pov-Ray standard text library "TimRom.ttf". The hands are made of some boxes and cylinders which have had chunks cut out of them. The knobs on the top and side are just cylinders with a radial normal applied. The interesting part of the pocket watch is the chain. It is made of three unions (the two hanging parts and the curve) of the individual link shape, assembled by Pov-Ray 3.0 #while loops. As far as I can tell, the three sections of chain line up perfectly. The Wrist Watch: This is only the face of a wrist watch. Using the entire model would have exceeded the allotted two units for an object on the Everclock and thrown the composition off balance. This is a Timex Ironman Indiglo which has also appeared many times on the Graphdev forum in my pictures. This model was built from scratch though because the old one was lost. The image maps for the writing on the face and the time were created using PC Paintbrush 3.0. They are included in EVERMAN.ZIP as the images TIMEX1.GIF and TIMEX2.GIF A light glass disk is applied over them to cast some reflection. The black part was made using some fairly complex Constructive Solid Geometry. The texture for the backing and the small screws is a very tiny crackle normal applied to give the effect of sparkle in the highlight. It didn't work as well as I thought it would but it doesn't look that bad. The Head: The human head at the 12:00 position of the Everclock is a really complex model using Pov-Ray 3.0 blob technology. Due to the fact that it was made for another purpose and has been refined over the last two months it has many controls for facial movement that aren't used in this image. The main texture is a highly refined skin texture that I have developed over the last 6 months. The micro chip implantation is a simple box with the image INTELOUT.GIF applied to it. In case you can't read it, it says "Intel Outside 80886". The pins along the edges are made using one cylinder and four Pov-Ray 3.0 #while loops. The Everman: The name Everman comes from the book Dragons of Autumn Twilight: Volume 1 of the DragonLance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. I borrowed it because it sounded appropriate. The Everman is made of approximately 300 blob components, each one is too complicated to explain here. The human male model was designed by me for another project so I copied the code over for this image. The controls for the Everman are in the included file EVERMAN.INC in EVERMAN.ZIP. The Starburst: The starburst is a union of 9 scaled and rotated spheres each with a Pov-Ray halo texture. I wanted to give the impresion of a lens flare without actually using one because it's not allowed in this competition. I think it turned out rather well. It also conveniently keeps the Everman from mooning us. The Everclock Hands: The hands are the same hands used in the pocket watch model with different proportions for more drama. About 25% of the Starburst is in front of the hands which gives a nicely flared look to them. The Background. The starfield background is a texture which has been improving since it's inception in February. The 'clouds' are a bozo pattern texture that is mostly blue with some red added in places. The stars are created by giving the texture of the applied sphere a bumpy normal texture. Overall the background has 50% specular highlight applied to it. In this way, some of the bumps pick up and reflect the light source with varying intensity making it look as if some stars are brighter than others. Some look like they're behind the cloud and some in front too. This texture doesn't animate well since there are probably billions of bumps in this image and changing the camera even slightly makes all new stars appear. But for a still image it looks great.