EMAIL:  ezekiel12@aol.com

NAME:  Kenneth J. Schnardthorst

TOPIC:  Spirit of Asia

COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.

TITLE: "Bonsai"

COUNTRY:  United States of America

WEBPAGE:  None

RENDERER USED:  POV-Ray for Windows v3.1g

TOOLS USED:  Splinetree and leafdef includes by Andrew Clinton and MegaPov v0.7 by Nathan Kopp, Lview pro v1b 

RENDER TIME:  Time For Parse: 0 hours 1 minutes 6.0 seconds (66 seconds)
Time For Trace: 0 hours 27 minutes  40.0 seconds (1660 seconds)
Total Time: 0 hours 28 minutes  46.0 seconds (1726 seconds)

HARDWARE USED:  Packard Bell M415 using a 166 MMX pentium w/ 32 megs RAM and a VooDoo 5500 graphics card w/ 64 megs of RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:  The picture is of a Bonsai tree sitting on a wooden floor in front of two wood and paper screens.  This is my first graphic using only POV-Ray, I normally use Raydream 3D.  I picked the Bonsai because of it's simplicity, and because of it's display of strength and serenity.  This is consistent with the Japanese arts even though they were not the only people to practice this form of horticulture.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:  I have been trying to learn how to use POV-Ray for about six months now, and I pretty much understand some of it's nuiances though I am far from being a Pro at it.
	I started this image by setting up the standard include files, then by setting up my camera, lighting, ground plane and background.  The next step was making my tree.  I like Andrew Clinton's splinetree include file, as it is pretty straight forward programing and I can get really good results that look fairly believable.  I spent one day manipulating the numbers in the program until I got the tree I wanted.  I made the tree structure first to get the shape right then I added the leaves using the leafdef include file.  These two files go hand in hand and really work good together.  The only problem I haven't been able to figure out is how to take other leaf images and give them a transparent background.
	Next I made a two grid shaped isosurfaces.  This is a function of MegaPov that I think is interesting, the ability of a mathematical formula to define a shape.  The first grid was rotated around the x-axis 90 degrees and positioned behind the tree.  The second grid was rotated around both the x and y axes by 90 degrees and the placed perpendicular to the first grid.  Both grids were pigmented with a medium brown color.
	The low pot the tree is in, is another isosurface.  I used standard coloring with pigment and normal modifiers to give it a texture of glazed pottery.  The object is centered under the tree object.
	The screens are simple box structures that are pigmented white and centered within the grid isosurfaces.  There is another box that forms the corner post, it is pigmented the same color as the grid structures.
	To give the impression of the tree being in soil, I took a simple sphere and squashed it a little.  I then applied a pebblely looking image map to give it some texture.  I used the same image as a bump map to enhance the appearance of the texture.  This actually took me quite a bit of time to figure out as the POV-Ray help files are not very specific about how to go about doing this, however once I got the hang of it I was very pleased with the results.
	The last thing I did was change the original ground plane that I started with into a simple box to make the floor.  Again I used an image map enhanced with a bump map to provide the texture for the floor.  The image I used is a nice picture of highly weathered pine boards.
	The design phase of this project took me about five days total. I used Lview Pro to convert the final image to jpg format and to add the titling.  All of the images I used along with the actual POV file are in the zip file, I have also included the splinetree zip archive that I got off of the POV-Ray site.