EMAIL: rntt@iol.ie
NAME: Colm de Cleir
TOPIC: Water
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Swimming Pool
COUNTRY: Republic of Ireland
WEBPAGE: http://www.csn.ul.ie/~colm
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.02
TOOLS USED: sPatch, POV-Ray, Paint Shop Pro
RENDERER TIME: 5 Days!
HARDWARE USED: P-300 32 Meg 

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

This image is a Swimming Pool (no, it's not just a funny name!) with a
water slide, a playground outside, some mountains in the background, 
people swimming walking, a diving board, showers, seating area, etc.

This was mainly inspired by the swimming pool in Leisureland in 
Salthill, Co. Galway. That is where I got the idea of the huge glass 
windows and the slide going outside, and the "spectator" section. 

I actually created this for the last competition, "The Elements", but I
was too late in getting it in. Water, OTOH is much more fitting for 
this picture.

When it was finished I noticed a few little things, like the matting 
which is supposed to cover the pool is blocked by the steps and the 
railings out of the pool by the slide.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

POV-Ray did most of the work. The people were made with sPatch. 
Since I wanted people with different coloured trunks, hats, bikini and
skin colour, I had to do several of them for each position (swimming, 
standing, which was a huge drain on memory. To add to that, I wanted 
many lights, and after a while, to get a more realistic look they were
area lights. This is what really slowed down the rendering. 

The textures of the floor, the signs, etc. were done in PSP. The water
itself is a height field, as I was having trouble getting waves and
ripples to look right. 

The slide is a load of torusses and cylinders stuck together. This 
became very complicated the further down the slide I went.

The playground outside was actually one I had begun for a different 
thing, but never finished. I thought I would put it in here just to 
look good.

The trees are all the same, but scaled and rotated different ways. A
tree was created in sPatch for that purpose. Just a blobby type of
thing on another blobby type of thing.

The two mountains are the same height field scaled and translated
in different ways. 

The roll of matting to cover the pool started off as a spiral of a box
using Chris Colefax's "bend.inc" modified slightly. In the end I 
decided you couldn't see the difference, so replaced it with a 
cylinder to cut down on render time. The way it hangs is still using
"bend.inc" though.

The diving board also uses "bend.inc".