EMAIL: StephenF@whoever.com
NAME: Stephen M. Farrell
TOPIC: Winter
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Sleigh Ride
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: n/a
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray for Windows 3.5 beta
TOOLS USED: POV-Ray for Windows 3.5 beta; Paint Shop Pro 6.02 (for signature and jpg compression only)
RENDER TIME: Approx. 14 hr. 15 min. 
HARDWARE USED: 1.4 GHz Thunderbird; 512 MB RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

  For me, winter has always been best represented by the old-fashioned type of Christmas card (like the ones Currier and Ives used to produce), with glistening snow, a warm inviting house, and a horse and sleigh riding by.  So that's the feeling I was trying to reproduce when I created this scene.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

  First off, I'd like to thank everyone for last round, especially for the comments I received.

  The house is mainly CSG, mostly a collection of rounded boxes.  The slats of the porch railing are lathes, and all of the snow is isosurfaces.  (With the exception of the snow on the roof, which is a box-like blob object... for some reason, I couldn't seem to get an isosurface to do what I wanted it to do here.)  The bricks of the chimney are also simple isosurfaces.

  The trees consist of a lot of cylinders placed using while loops and a lot of randomization.  They're designed to look good only from a distance.  (Believe me, if you could see one close up, you'd laugh.)  The lamppost is a lathe object (created using a single lathe flattened and rotated multiple times), while the top of the lamp is CSG.  The ground is an isosurface which uses a pigment function to create the slightly uneven surface.  The footprints are simple CSG objects differenced out of the ground... they were a last-minute addition, and could benefit from some additional work.

  The people are blob objects which were designed to be somewhat simple but hopefully look decent, at least.  To clothe them, I simply created a copy of the original object and decreased the threshold level slightly, which creates a perfect, slightly larger version (similar to a skintight spandex outfit).  Then, I differenced out various parts (using a cylinder to cut out the neckline, etc.)  A third copy was needed to create different-colored pants for the men and the housewife's apron.  I then added CSG objects to add detail, such as the skirts on the women, and the glasses, collar and bowtie for the sleigh driver.

  The horses are also blob objects, and hopefully look all right.  The sleigh is completely CSG, and could definitely benefit from some additional work, but I ran out of time.  (And if I'm being overly apologetic, I'd like to apologize for that ::grin::)  The sky is a sky_sphere, consisting of twelve layers of pigment.  I wanted something fairly simple which had the bruised look of a snowstorm threatening, and I think it works for that.

  That's about it... as always, comments/criticism are greatly appreciated.  (I suspect I won't have much time to comment on other entries this round, though, since I'm moving to a new apartment soon and have a lot to do... I'm hoping to at least find time to vote and provide some 
feedback, though.)  Thanks in advance, and good luck to everyone this round!