EMAIL: jl@artcom-gmbh.de
NAME: Jochen Lippert
TOPIC: Loneliness
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: A lighthouse keeper in the desert sun
COUNTRY: Germany
WEBPAGE: -
RENDERER USED: Povray 3.5
TOOLS USED: Photoshop, for JPEG conversion
RENDER TIME: 1 hours 13 minutes
HARDWARE USED: AMD Athlon 800 MHz

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

There is a song by the Sisters of Mercy with the line "A lighthouse keeper in
the desert sun" in the lyrics. I like this idea, even though it surely is not
meant literally: A lighthouse in the middle of the desert, no water to be seen
around, and no ships, too, of course. A pretty senseless job for a lighthouse
keeper, and a pretty lonely one for sure.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

I started with the lighthouse, which is completely made of "classic" CSG parts
like cones, cylinders, spheres, tori etc. The wire on the roof, called
"Blitzableiter" in German, no idea what it is called in English, was made with
a sphere sweep object, which I just had to use. ;)
I later decided to only show the top of the lighthouse, and to let the sun
shine directly into the camera, which is why you can't see much detail, just a
shadow-like outline.

I made this decision because I wanted to keep the main "actor", the lighthouse
keeper, as simple as possible. He is made out of non-textured CSG parts like
cones and super-ellipsoids and is meant to be seen as an outline against
the sunlight only.

The landscape is made of isosurface objects, and the sun is a union of a sphere
and a textured disc as halo.

Most effort was put into the modelling of the lighthouse top, though it still
doesn't look as complex as I would like. I added several "wires" and rivets,
but it still looks a bit simplistic compared to real lighthouses. I was unable
to make the "windows" of the lamp house out of "glass", too, because the lamp
itself got too dark when I tried. So I just left them out completely. I guess
the lighthouse keeper has done a great job on cleaning the glass, that's why
you can barely see it. ;)