EMAIL:     jd@surveyor.in-berlin.de
NAME:      Jens Dengler
TOPIC:     City
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE:     Berlin 2000+n - A Bug's View (bgate.jpg)
COUNTRY:   Germany
WEBPAGE:   http://www.in-berlin.de/User/jd/

RENDERER USED: povray 3.1g.Linux.gcc
TOOLS USED: GIMP (heightmaps, images, tga->jpg)
RENDER TIME: 2h+
HARDWARE USED: Pentium 133MHz 32MB

EXPERTS DON'T HAVE TO READ FURTHER.


IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
This image is a picture of the most used, misused, and photographed
monument of my own city - the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin - with an a
bit unusual perspective. I'm somewhat disgusted that any greasy media
is using the gate as its capital icon, therefore I'm using it, too.

The image shows an early spring early morning view of the gate, when no
tourists are around. Except you, but you are a bug of 3mm height. So what
you mainly see is your last night's hotel (an empty lying beer can), a
poster, and some strange remnants left by humans. The currently inactive
fountain on the Pariser Platz and the traffic regulations you see were
made somewhat around 2006. The gateways are closed for any kind of traffic
except pedestrians and bicycles (and maybe slow passing emergency vans)
like it was already once shortly after reunion and before the car lobby
demanded the traffic to go through the gate.

In the past this car traffic resulted in many problems. The least problem
was that it was difficult to cross the street near the building - not
only for bugs. The dark stripes on the center right main pillar of the
gate are not imaginary, they are the result of a collision with a bus or
truck. At the time of the traffic the gate was crumbling in quick-motion.
But with the new regulations the complete collapse could had been prevented.
(Well, its not the ruins topic anymore, isn't it?) Still, you might hurry
up to leave the street, because the next automobile could be a cleaning
vehicle.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
Synopsis: povray +w800 +h600 +a0.06 +v -i bgate.pov

The main idea was to make as much as everything in CSG. Except for the
the reliefs at the tympanons of the side buildings and for the image on
the single stand-up information sign this idea became reality. The
reliefs are height maps, the "Berlin 2000+n" poster is a mapped texture
image, all made with GIMP.

The photographies on the imaginary "Berlin 2000+n" poster are my own.
The "i-signs" with the pointer to the souvenirs shop exist in reality.
The beer's name on the tin can is actually from a beer label within
the comic "Neon Genesis Evangelion". My current fav. I'm eagerly
waiting for the next volume. I hope this beer label doesn't exist.
If it does, it would be a really funny prophecy to have Japanese beer
in Berlin in 2000+n, because currently Germany is still picky about
the import of non-German beer.

You don't see the height map reliefs in the image. The reason for
this is: when starting the image I wanted to make a diffent view with
looking to the gate from a much higher and a bit more distant position.
But when introducing the tin I fell in love with the shown viewpoint.
You can create the initially planned view by uncommenting the camera
parameter of the "final view" and commenting the parameter of the
"bugs view" in the main source. With this final view its also visible
that the center tin is lying on a void, overpainted roadway strip.
Another funny thing about the final view is that the details in the
foreground except the tins are vanishing completely.

Making this image I learned a lot, again. Some firsts are
the #while directive of PoVRay 3.1 (I like it), the brick texture
(rotating it wrong makes a usable footwalk tile pattern, too), the
usage of gradients (partly with turbulence - THNX for the hint on
water waves), the usage of granite as a normal pattern, the usage of
crand, prisms (simply visible in the foreground, but I don't think
its as useful as it could be when it would be definable like cylinders
within the 3D space), and last but not least an anti-alializing
threshold smaller than 0.1 (it was really necessary for the different
vertical and horizontal lines in the image).

Included into the zip archive is an additional list of colors named
xcolors.inc - this is a converted version of the rgb.txt of XFree86,
where all doubled color names with lower case letter and blanks in
it were removed. A small number of these colors were used in bgate.pov
because sometimes I have a more familiar feeling for these names. Still
the additional colors weren't enough for the different shades of ochre
and pale green in the image.

The included naked tree is made with the self programmed tool, again.
This time only one simple tree without texture is used and rotated a bit
at the different positions to close the views to the horizon (when seen
from the "final view" - for the "bugs view" the horizon is closed by
the tins).
                                                                -- jd --