EMAIL: bjoern_stein@gmx.net

NAME: Björn Stein

TOPIC: Gardens

COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.

TITLE: Garden

COUNTRY: Germany

WEBPAGE: http://programmierer.freepage.de/bstein

RENDERER USED: Pov-Ray 3.1

TOOLS USED:
  - include files for Povray (all downloaded mid-December from links found at www.povray.com):
     - Arbres.inc by J.L PRADEL
     - Lightning.inc by Jeffry J. Brickley (1st beta release slightly adjusted for v3.1 of Pov-Ray)
     - Trees.inc by Sonya Roberts
     - Brilliant.inc by Jerome Grimbert
     - Tomtree.inc by Tom Aust

RENDER TIME: 01:59:22

HARDWARE USED: Pentium III w/ 128 MB Ram


IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

Doesn't it just fit for the time of the millenium bug? Imagine a distant future,
when people (or some other creatures?) have forgotten how to grow trees or
properly arrange a garden...

I've intended a surrealistic image combining the beauty of nature with the excact
opposite, artificial objects with exact geometric shaping. To put emphasis on that
contrast, I've included no blossoms but instead a brilliant floating in the air.
Think of it as sun shining over the scene!

To combine future and past, I had an ancient God infuriated by this abuse of nature
throw a thunder bolt in for effect. That it misses all those great targets (the
trees!) is - to me - yet another proof of the image's surrealism.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

This image is "just" a combination of what others have provided in the form of include
files for creating certain objects.

I started off using a hexagonal pattern of different stone textures from stones1.inc.
The trees were grown using 3 different includes (see TOOLS USED) in a special containers
made of stone and filled with soil. The lightning strikes due to yet another include,
which I merely adjusted to work with version 3.1 of Pov-Ray; I also redefined the color
"Silver" in order to get the more exciting yellowish look of the thunder bolt. The palm
leaves coming in the image from above are mere intersections of two spheres.

To the brilliant from the corresponding include file I have added a texture to make it
fit into the background.

The fading in the distant results from focal blur.

If you render the scene, be advised to turn off debug and warning messages
 - there are plenty of them! I recommend setting Q to about 13 to 15 in bsGarden.pov,
which yields a pretty high quality at a greatly reduced rendering time (to ca. 1/2 h).