EMAIL: StephenF@whoever.com
NAME: Stephen M. Farrell
TOPIC: Old Technology
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Robotic Unified Religion
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: N/A
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray for Windows 3.5
TOOLS USED: POV-Ray for Windows 3.5; Paint Shop Pro 7 (for signature and jpg conversion)
RENDER TIME: Approx. 44.5 hours
HARDWARE USED: Athlon Thunderbird 1.4 GHz; 512 Mb RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

  In the future, robots have built a religion around their technological forebears, the old mainframe computers (and be aware that I've taken a lot of artistic license in portraying these old computers).  Here, two worshippers are surprised and awed when paid a visit by their 'god'.... 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

  First, let me address the obvious radiosity artifacting.  I used somewhat basic settings for the radiosity, and they worked fine until I added in the windows, which were one of the last things I worked on.  When I realized there was a problem, I tried to come up with some better settings which seemed to fix the problem, but when I went to do the final render I realized after several hours that it was goind WAY too slow... that there was no way the scene would finish rendering before the deadline.  So I tweaked some of the settings in an attempt to minimize the artifacting but not increase the render time too significantly.  Not that it really matters... it looks the way it looks and needs to be judged accordingly, but I just want people to know that I am aware of the problems and did what I could to fix them.... :(

  As usual, almost the entire scene is created with simple csg, so just let me touch on some of the main objects.

  The robots - almost completely made up of cylinders.  They are meant to look rather primitive and simplistic, designed to represent first-generation prototypes.  In a way, they might be considered old technology themselves... you just know they were replaced with better, sleeker versions soon after they were introduced.  

  The 'mainframe' computer - completely csg.  I did some research into what early computers (ENIAC and UNIVAC, mainly) looked like, and found they didn't really suit what I felt was needed for the scene, so I tried to combine various aspects from them into a smaller, more compact model.  All of its components are based on parts of actual mainframe computers, with the exception of the 'mouth'. which is meant to give it a somewhat human aspect.

  The banners - rather simple pigment-function isosurfaces intersected with prisms to get the overall shape.

  The windows - all csg.  I'm not sure what people will think of them, but what I was going for was a rather stylized representation of a circuit board, with minor variations for each window.

  The walls, floor, ramp and railings - again, all csg.  For me, the most challenging part of this scene was trying to come up with different shades of silver-gray metal which all worked well together - complementing each other while not blending together and creating a dull, washed-out backdrop for the scene.  I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, though.

  That's about it for now, I guess.  Once again, I'd like to thank everyone for the comments/criticisms over the years... they've been a big help to me.  Good luck to everyone this round, and see you all next time.