EMAIL: clintona@ibm.net

NAME: Andrew Clinton

TOPIC: Elements

COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.

TITLE: The Mercury Machine

COUNTRY: Canada

WEBPAGE: http://www3.sympatico.ca/dclinton/

RENDERER USED: PovRay 3.1b for Windows

TOOLS USED: PovRay 3.1b, SPatch 1.51, Photoshop 3.0

RENDER TIME: 12h 6m 48s

HARDWARE USED: Pentium II 333mhz

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

I've had a number of ideas pop into my head for interesting
ray-tracings: This is one of them.  When I saw that the topic was
elements I immediately thought about one of my favorites, mercury.  The
image is of a bizarre and fantastic machine which draws mercury from an
underground sea and fires it off in all directions.  I had originally
had the plan to add a conveyer belt with thermometers entering into the
machine, but this idea had to be scrapped because I couldn't get the
belt close enough to the camera to see what was in it.  Of course, a
machine like this is hardly safe, and the poor person standing on the
walkway taking the picture is about to meet his demise.  Rational
observers should stay in the small control booth in the upper right,
where they would be safe behind several layers of plexiglass while the
machine is in operation.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

Almost all the elements (grin) in this image were created using basic
csg or simple modeling.  Everything was laid out in PovRay without the
use of a modeller.

The path was done mostly with partial cylinders, partial torii, and
boxes.  The grate was the tricky part, to create this I used a huge
number of flattened cylinders intersected with the shape of the path.
I gave the path a dark metal texture with some spots of rust.

The mercury sea below the path is a surface modelled in SPatch.  I used
a grid and raised and lowered various points to give it the turbulent,
deformed look.

The rock walls are four height fields rotated at 45 degree angles.
There is one straight ahead which is flat along the x-y axis, two at
the sides rotated around the y axis 45 degrees, and one at the top
rotated around the x axis 45 degrees.  I gave them a complicated
gradient texture (for me anyway) which goes from dark rock to light
rock to mercury coated rock at the bottom.

The machine was made using a number of csg operations, but most of it
is made with cylinders and spheres.  I created a number of textures for
the different parts, including a reflective texture for the head,
yellow texture for the hydralics, and a dark metal texture for the main
body.

The mercury spitting out of the machine was done using blobs, and once
one mercury blob was defined it was rotated around the head at various
angles using a number of while loops.  The distance from the machine
was randomized using the rand(seed()) functions.

The small control booth was done by cutting a couple of boxes out of
the height field and then "furnishing" the room with a few screens and
lights.  The green screen is supposed to be a picture of the mercury
machine but at this distance it is hard to tell what it is.

Last but not least, the canisters on the left wall are cylinders and
torii with cut up cones on the top.  These are supposed to be connected
to the hydralics on the machine, but this is also hard to tell from the
camera position.


As this is my first competition, I look forward to any comments that
anyone might have.  There is still a lot that I was hoping to add in to
the image, but the deadline was upon me.  I only started work about a
two weeks before the end, so I missed out on the first month and
half.  Perhaps I'll get organized quicker next time :)

AC