EMAIL: kazemir@mpr.ca
NAME: Steven Kazemir
TOPIC: Time
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
RENDERER USED: povray, Ver 3.0.beta.5a.msdos.wat
TOOLS USED: lparser, fractint
RENDERTIME:1 Hour 42 Minutes (+a0)
HARDWARE USED: 90MHz Pentium
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
  I know the topic is time.  Sunsets always remind me of the passage of
  time:  the end of a day, the begining of a night etc.  It might be a
  stratch of the topic, but the topic was left open to interpretation
  on purpose because this is the first competition.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
  I must give credit to the POVRAY team for my inspiration and beginings
  for this image.  I sure many people will recognize the sky and the water
  from the sunset3 showoff example file that comes with povray.

  I started by modifying the SUN's Halo.  I wanted to get a more faded gradual
  taper on the orange colour around the sun.

  Then I added a few "1st" stars that are sometimes visible during a sunset.

  The next step was to add a tree and land of some sort to give the image
  some depth.

  The tree was created with RenderStar Technologies L-System Parser.  There
  is a link to this site on povray's home page.  Once I was happy with the
  overall shape of the tree, I converted it to a povray .inc file and added
  texture, colour etc.

  The piece of land went through many variations.  I started with a PLASMA
  fractal generated by fractint.  I cut out, stratched, scaled and otherwise
  tweaked the image until I got the shape you see in the image.  (I uses
  Paint Shop Pro to add random noise to the image, this helped with the
  roughness of the land).  Add a gradient, some turbulance and a texture,
  and there you have it.

  I got the idea for the beacon from a calander I have on my office wall.  I
  used the calander image to create the beacon.

  I didn't know what to add next, I though the sailboat idea was too cliche
  and I wanted something else.  Eventually I came up with idea of placing a
  porch railing and a warf to create the idea of a cabin by the water side.

  I have spent ~3 months working on this image (only about 15-30 minutes at
  a time, and not every day).  I did a lot of tweaking of colours and textures,
  and I finally settled with what you see.  I like it, I hope you do to.