EMAIL: joheriks@abo.fi
NAME: Johannes Eriksson
TOPIC: Mythology
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Demise of the Red Fighter Pilot
COUNTRY: Finland
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.5
TOOLS USED: Moray 3.3, Rhinoceras 3.0, gimp, 3DS Max 5, World Machine, Python
RENDER TIME: 19 minutes  14.0 seconds
HARDWARE USED: Athlon XP 1700


IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

A bit of World War I combat aviation history here in order to explain
the connection to the subject "mythology".

This IRTC entry is my interpretation of April 21, 1918 and the last
moments in the life of Rittmeister Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen,
the famous "Red Baron". He died from a wound inflicted by a single
bullet on that ominous day. The kill was originally attributed to
Capt. Roy Brown, a Canadian pilot in the Royal Flying Corps flying a
Sopwith Camel, and this is probably what most people
remember. However, most evidence seem to indicate that it was
Australian ground forces who fired the fatal shot (von Richthofen had
chased a novice pilot by the name of Wilfred May deep into allied
territory when he was killed). So in that sense Brown's victory can be
considered a "myth" at least to some degree.

"Mythology" also deals with legends, and von Richthofen was truly a
legend. Officially credited with 80 confirmed kills and probably more
than 100 in reality, he was the Ace of Aces of World War I and is the
most famous combat aviator in history. Together with Oswald Boelcke,
the father of aerial fighter tactics, he flew in Jasta 2 which was one
of Germany's first offensive combat aircraft patrols. He later founded
Jasta 11 and his famous flying circus, whose members painted the tails
of their fighters the scarlet color of their leader's Fokker triplane.
The bright red Fokker DR-I aircraft that instilled fear in allied
pilots and gave birth to many legends in its time is still the most
well-known and recognizable combat aircraft.

In the scene von Richthofen is deep within allied territory at low
altitude. He is being attacked from behind by Capt. Brown who is
swooping down on him.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

Scene was composed and textured in Moray 3.3, rendered in POV-Ray 3.5.

The Fokker DR-I and Sopwith camel were modeled in Rhino and exported
as UDO files. The UDO files were then imported and textured in Moray.
Modeling the planes was the most time-consuming part in making the
scene. I looked for three-view drawings of the DR-I and Camel on the
net and also scanned some I found in the manual from the old MS-DOS
game Red Baron! It took quite a lot of time to model especially the
DR-I as I do not have much experience with modeling aircraft.

The twin Spandau machine guns and von Richthofen's head were also modeled
in Rhino. The ruins were created in 3DS max.

The heightfield used for ground was generated by World Machine. To
arborate the ground with trees I hacked together a custom Python
program just for this scene (it is included in the source). The
program reads the heightfield and places out billboards (i.e. pictures
mapped on very thin cubes, rotated so that they face the camera) on
the correct height. The tree pictures are POV-rendered from scenes
generated by my own implementation of the Weber-Penn tree generation
algorithm. More information about the algorithm can be found in this
paper:

http://www.cs.duke.edu/education/courses/fall02/cps124/resources/p119-weber.pdf

For those interested in programs using the algorithm I recommend
Wolfram Diestel's Arbaro rather than my own program (which is
unfinished and rather hackish). Arbaro's webpage is at:

http://arbaro.sourceforge.net/

Image maps for the ground, wings, fuselage, flying bullets and machine
gun flames were drawn in the Gimp. The rotating propeller and engine
were modelled and animated in 3D Studio Max and rendered with motion
blur to a bitmap. Other textures are procedural textures generated by
POV-Ray.