EMAIL: webmaster@freegraphics.com
NAME: Claire Amundsen Schaeffer
TOPIC: Ruins
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: The Artist's House
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: http://www.wockyjivvy.com/art/
RENDERER USED: Povray 3.1g
TOOLS USED: Moray
	Gilles Tran's Fabulous Tree Macro
	 http://www.mediaport.net/Artichaud/Tran/english/gtmaine.htm
	Rick Bono's Geodesic Dome Maker
	 http://www.cris.com/~rjbono/html/domes.html
	PaintShop Pro (signature and heightfield image map)

RENDER TIME: 1 hour, 24 minutes
HARDWARE USED: Celeron, 500 MHZ

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

"The Artist's House"

The home of an artist in search of a medium -- he has tried painting, pottery, basketweaving, wildly colored furniture, and the decorative geodesic hanging domes (all can be seen in the picture).  Sadly, he has never been financially successful and eventually turns to his dream -- creating replications of all the great ruins. But at this point in his life he is out of money. So he cannibalizes his house -- using siding, rail posts, anything he can to recreate the great ruins... and in so doing, creates his greatest work, the ruin of his own home.

Ruins included in the pic (besides the artist's house -- starting from the lower left corner and working clockwise):
The Colosseum (created primarily from pieces of the rail posts and blue trim); the beginnings of a Tinglit totem pole (created from one of the columns of the house and scraps of siding); the Temple of Abul Simpel (second floor porch, created from columns and railings); the Parthenon (on top of the gazebo, created from rail posts and scraps); Stonehenge (lower right corner, created from the decorative lattice pieces below the porch); Easter Island heads (in front of the gazebo; created from siding); and a Mayan Temple (created from rail posts and scrap).

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

This image is made up almost entirely of primitives and simple CSGs -- cubes, spheres, and torii for the most part (exception being the baskets, vases, trees, and domes).  The ground is a CSG (difference), a heightfield with spheres making holes/puddles, with a plane beneath, showing through the "puddles". There is not a lot fancy in this work -- just lots of tedium in placing several thousand objects.

The only image maps used in the piece were for the heightfields (the dirt on the steps are also heightfields).  Any other "special effect" (such as the peeling paint) was done strictly with POV textures.  The peeling paints are all variations on one layered texture -- scaled, rotated, and translated on each piece.

The zip file includes all the textures used in the file, the scene file stripped down (it was fairly large) to the ground (includes lights and camera settings), and the image map used for the ground heightfield.

Not live at the time of this writing, but possibly by the time you read this, http://www.freegraphics.com/arthouse
 -- a link to detailed images made along the way showing the progression of this piece (at one time it was pink ;)

Special Thanks:
-- to the members posting on the POV-Ray news server and their help with outdoor lighting suggestions
-- to Pete Schaeffer, my best critic
-- and to Elizabeth Pomada and Michael Larsen, editors of the book "America's Painted Ladies: The Ultimate Celebration of Our Victorians" \ this book served as a great source of inspiration in the construction of the house and the "decoratives" added to the house.