EMAIL: pete.cotton@shaw.ca
NAME: Pete Cotton
TOPIC: Old Technology
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Roman Aquaduct
COUNTRY: CANADA
WEBPAGE:
RENDERER USED: povray 3,1 for windows
TOOLS USED: moray, Paint Shop pro 5
RENDER TIME: 2 hours
HARDWARE USED: Athalon 1800+ with 512MB DDR ram
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
I have always been fascinated by the technological achievments of the Roman Empire. In Britain, I used to hike over the old Roman roads which had been built 2,000 years previously and where still in good condition. Where ever I went in the Mediterranean I used to keep coming across Roman buildings, including the still function aquaducts that where used to feed water and goods to Rome.

This ray-tracing is my interpretation of how those aquaducts might have looked in their hayday. The sandstone is typical of a lot of the med, and the slabs of marble in the fountain are prevelant through out Italy. 

I tried to make the scene look more natural by having a few "imperfections". i.e. The toy boat on the water, the scaffolding on the temple, the bird flying away from the woman on the balcony.

I also tried to make it appear that there was more then just thius enclosed view, there are buildings off tot he sides of the image that cast their shadows into the main image, most notably a flag pole, which is never actually seen, but who's shadow I used to accentuate the staircase up to the temple.

I also decided early on that their would be wind coming from the left of the screen, so the banners are fluttering slightly and the clothes on the clothes line at the rear are blowing.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
My biggest problem with this image was that even with 512mb of ram, I still reached a point where it was taking forever to manipulate the scene. In hindsight I would have been much better making up the components of the scene seperately and meshing them all together at the end. As it was, as I approached the end I did have to do a lot of the work seperate from the main image and then scale it to fit, but it was a painstaking process.

Originally I tried to bump map the walls etc, but eventually I had to resort to making each brick seperately and cutting and pasting them into the Aquaduct wall. This seems to be the only good way to get a realistic feel. Again, a painfull process.

I had hoped that the stain glass windows in the temple would produce a myriad of light through the open doors, but apparently not. I might play with this for one of my later images.

I rendered the image at 1600x1200 as this is what my monitor is set at. I realise this may be a bit large for some people, but I hope that it helps to enhance the image.

Win or lose, I had a lot of fun creating this image, and I am happy with it. 

Cheers,

Pete