EMAIL: MMandl@aol.com
NAME: MaryAnn Mandell
TOPIC: School
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Learning POV
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/6588/povfind 
RENDERER USED: POV for windows
TOOLS USED: Moray, Glview, Lview for conversion fron .tga to .jpg and my experiences while learning POV
RENDER TIME: 46 minutes
HARDWARE USED: Pentium 100

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

"What IS that camera looking at?"
"Oh yes, rotate and scale BEFORE you translate."
"Spotlight . . . let me see, that's section 4. something."
"Where DID my object go?"
"What does it mean when it says 'Looking for } ... but object found instead'?"
and finally, just plain old
"OH, // $#@!". <--- trans. "Darn!"

I know that YOU have not had to say any thing like this; but I have while learning POV.

The scene depicts a narrow (because my knowledge of POV is limited) shelf. Sitting on the shelf is a cutout box which represents a scene often done by newbies with the cliche green and yellow chekered floor, blue sky and mirrored sphere (is the misplaced curley brace reflected there?). The letters and curley braces are there to tie in the POV language to what happens after rendering. The camera and spotlight are there because you can't see anything unless a camera and a light are included. The notebook, containing the POV Docs, does not sit completly on the shelf. It won't until I understand all that's in them. (Will that ever happen?)

In the background (a starfield), rising through the mist (be happy, I could have used Green Fog!) are primitives, a heightfield, a beizer patch and some superellipsoids that I have to figure out how to put together to make objects. And, above it all, is my my mind's eye, radiating with creative energy just trying to encompass it all.

Does this prove that one's Mind's Eye is bigger than one's POV? (Bad! Bad!) <g>

I had so much fun doing this scene and I hope you smile when viewing it! MaryAnn

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

I used Moray to do the modeling and Moray's Texture editor to do the textures. I did have to do some hand tweaking and added the Lens flare, the starfield and the rainbow.

Where possible (in keeping with the theme), I have tried to use POV's standard, cliche and over used textures and colors such as those already mentioned as well as the wood, the red, green and yellow. I used a very scaled and bumpy bozo for the camera, a grayed out red for the background objects, a radial for the iris of the eye and a very scaled gradient for the pages in the POV Doc.

Terrain Maker was used to make the height field. 

I used Glview to create and extrude the letters {POV} as well as the letters found on the label, they were saved as raw data and then converted using Thomas Baier's conversion utilities to something Moray and POV uses.

The camera and the notebook were made using CSG in conjunction with Superellipsoids. 

The spotlight is a surface of rotation or lathed object combined with a glassy sphere for the end and has a scaled checker texture to simulate the little thingys that one finds there and some serious CSG with cylinders and torri to make the screw in part.

The label was created from extruded letters and some CSG.

I used some point lights and three spotlights that have been scaled and colored.

The ring around the eye is a rainbow that I scaled way down and then I changed its color map.

The eye is CSG and the radiating energy is from Nathan Kopp's Lens Flare Plug In. DO NOT use mine if you want a good copy as I changed it so much trying to do what I wanted. PLEASE get it from his web site.
http://www.grfn.org/~nkopp/pov/flare1.shtml
Thank you Nathan

By the way, if you find my lost object, please return it to me.