EMAIL: keayers@columbus.rr.com
NAME: Ken Ayers
TOPIC: Surrealism
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Door To Someplace
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: http://home.columbus.rr.com/keayers/index.html
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.1g
TOOLS USED:Corel PhotoPaint (Conversion to JPEG)
RENDER TIME: 791 seconds
HARDWARE USED: HP Pavilion, 1.0 GHz AMD Athlon, 256Mb RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

The notion of a door that leads to a place that isn't "here"
is a recurring theme in many forms of art ... from science
fiction to surrealistic paintings.  This is my interpretation
of that theme.

I had had this idea kicking around in my head for quite some
time.  This month's topic finally gave me the "kick in rear"
I needed to follow through with it.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

There were a number of challenges associated with fitting a
boundless landscape into a "room" on the other side of the
door.  The "DoorExposed.jpg" file, within the accompanying
ZIP file, exposes some of the movie-set-like magic that
poses entirely for the benefit of the camera.

As a software developer, I find that I apply many of the
same techniques to producing POV-Ray images as I do to
producing the software I write by day.  Consequently,
since I naturally think "modular", I end up with lots of
files, each one typically devoted to one particular piece
of the scene.  I also tend to use a lot of variables and
treat my scene description, in many ways, as if it were
a "regular" program.

For example, the main scene file ("Door.pov") contains a
block of code that slices the "clock" value into pieces,
in which individual digits control some aspect of the
way the scene is rendered.  In fact, by rendering with
the clock option:

    +K101010

enables the "test camera" setup used to produce the
"DoorExposed" image.

Along these lines, I've also developed a technique for
managing the render clock, to provide a scene-oriented
approach to animations.  If you're interested, check out
the POV-Ray Animation Tutorial on my website:

    http://home.columbus.rr.com/keayers/index.html