EMAIL: gary@mackinnon.com
NAME: Gary MacKinnon
TOPIC: Dreams
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Insecurity
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: 
RENDERER USED: Pov-ray 3.5 release candidate 5
TOOLS USED: Paint Shop Pro to convert to jpg.
RENDER TIME: Less than an hour. 
HARDWARE USED: Athlon 1700 with 1GByte Ram 
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

We dream in gray scale.  This is not a scene from a nightmare but rather the nightly replay of ones insecurities: loneliness, and perhaps fear of what lies beyond the end of the ramp.  

It rained a short while ago. The sky is clearing.  The streets are wet and empty. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

The image was inspired by a photograph by John Pawson and published in his book titled "Minimum".
  
The modelling is all Povray script.  The ramp walkway and adjacent walls were from a wall creating macro that I wrote for other scenes.  The stones on the ramp are isosurfaces made from the superellipsoid function and modified with 3D noise.   

There are no explicit light sources in this image.  The light mostly comes from the clouds in the sky which receive ambient illumination. This natural approach was key to the lighting and shadowing. Any explicit lighting ruined the effect.    The wet look of the surfaces was created by adding reflection to the stone surfaces. A surface normal provided some roughness. There is a general scene ambient level of .1 mostly to give the surface of the background building a light texture.  
The pigments of all objects were selected from shades of gray.