EMAIL: jouni@mikrobitti.fi
NAME: Jouni T. Heikniemi
TOPIC: Ruins
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: The Dawn After War
COUNTRY: Finland
WEBPAGE: http://www.mikrobitti.fi/~jth/ (Finnish, sorry)
RENDERER USED: POVRay 3.1g (Win32)
TOOLS USED: Terrain Maker 1.1, Moray 3.1
RENDER TIME: 1m 41s
HARDWARE USED: Mobile Pentium II 400 MHz, 128 MB

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

The Kingdom of Hauler, ruled by the legendary king Julius Ehrmann, had been 
under continuous threats from the southern Schrude Empire. One silent
midsummer afternoon the border archipelago became a stage for a massacre
more serious than ever. Schrudian warships sailed forth, blasting the 
coastal outpost of Sipan with full loads of cannonfire.

The battle continued the whole evening, until darkness fell. The dawn broke
the silence with birds' singing - and a ghastly sight, with dead men lying
around the devastated outpost.


Ok, so this is where we step in. Simply, it's a tribute to those wonderful
Lego(tm) building blocks many of us spent our childhoods with. They are 
simply great, as any normal pounding or rending would not break them. Yea,
castles would fall and gates shatter, but all in one-block units. And
just to be built again, bigger and better than before. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

The inspiration struck me in the end of January after thinking through 
some different approaches to the Ruins topic. Rendering some Lego block 
stuff had been interesting since my acquisition of POVRay, so it wasn't 
that hard to select the path after all.

I started with some basic modeling of those 4x2 Lego blocks. Most of the
stuff after that was simply combining and reusing the prepared elements 
with some loops. Moray was used to model the lathe object for the cannon
pipe, but otherwise the code is entirely hand-written. 

After the outpost was done, I realized that the deadline is tightening its 
grip, so I had to drop some of my ideas and went on to create the scenery
with Terrain Maker. After couple of evenings of hasty work, I ended up 
with something I could live with, and thus decided to submit the work
despite its incomplete parts.


Thinking afterwards, a little more of time and right attitude would've 
made this one a lot better. Now it relies on its interpretation of the
theme, which may or may not be enough for, say, TOP-20. Then again, 
IRTC just might not be about winning, and as it's my first submission 
candidate that got even this far, I'm just happy to have it out there. 
There you go!


DISCLAIMER STUFF:

LEGO Group wants me to have this one, so here goes:

LEGO(R) is a trademark of LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor,
authorize or endorse this text, image or anything related thereto. None 
of the modelling is intended to be exactly accurate, and the image
may not reflect the actual building possibilities with Lego blocks. 
The picture is intended to be a totally neutral representation of my
personal visions, which are in no way connected with LEGO Group.


... Just blast the lawyers, will you?