EMAIL: samthemagical@cs.com NAME: Sam Bleckley TOPIC: Museum COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Tempus Recipere: Museum of Time Regained COUNTRY: United States RENDERER USED: MegaPov 1.1 TOOLS USED: Wings, HamaPatch, Petnibonum, PovTree, PoseRay RENDER TIME: Approx 70 hrs, in 3 renders. HARDWARE USED: Pentium 4, 3.02GHz/1G RAM IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The basic concept is a Museum of Time, with the viewer standing in the 'Religion' section. I got this idea after an egyptian exhibit came to the museum where I volunteer. The mummies, they have been subjected to so much. We pursue knowledge, which is wonderful, but *what if the egyptians where right?* WHat if we are ending their stay in what should have been eternity? That go tme thinking, and I recalled a visit to Mesa Verde. They have put in gutters, to prevent water from eroding the structures...but it is that very process that created the caves to begin with. I didn't know whether it was right, to preserve the history for the pursuit of knowledge but at the cost of the future... Anyway, I want to get a bit of a reaction from this one! I want you to wonder if it's right, or wrong, or what. The first scene is the Buddha, just before enlightenment, as the arrows of Mara are turned into flowers. This is, when you read it, an incredible moment. I've wanted to do it in graphics for a LONG time. You can't see, unfortunately, that he is already 'calling the Earth as witness.' In the story, he does not do this until he is enlightened, but we're talking about warping time here, so I figured I ought to mess around with things. It probably means something deep. The next scene is Odin, hanging from Yggdrasil in his search for secret knowledge. I was almost positive no one would be deeply offended by my bottling this one. This was the last scene I modeled, and I just ran out of time. no detail at all here. The final scene is Jesus on the cross. I was going for the moment of 'Eloi! Eloi! ala Sabancthani,' ('My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?') but I did put this one the furthest away, for a couple of reasons. You can't see any detail. You don't see what he looks like, or what he's doing. You can see the other two crosses, cut off by the glass. All three scenes are enclosed, incased, and ready for scholarly inspection.- Also, I am really happy with the factal-like construction of the scene. There are four trees, all behind glass, all in different states of well-being: but who will find their god on/under the tree outside? The large size is mostly to clarify the Buddha/Mara scene. Yes, I know I got the date wrong on the sign. 582 BCE, as I recall, but I got in a bit of a hurry towards the end. Finally, the wall on the right is NOT really thin, that is just the glass case, refracting. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: First of all, I want to explain two things: 1. I ran out of time. Finals were well nigh impossible, so I lost several weeks ;( So i apologize right now, for the render quality. it needs better anti-aliasing, and there are some details I just couldn't include, like Ior in the glass banister, and the like. Also, the code is downright disgusting. A 1250 line mess. That said, this is a better image than any I've created before, so I am happy. 2. Last time I entered, my text file was just poorly written and short, so this one may be a little on the long side. OK, I think that just about explains the scene, So here is a log of how I am going about it. You probably only want to read all this if you're wondering how I did something, or how my process goes. Or if you want to make fun of me. Otherwise, it's just long-winded. 11/7 I started last night. Got a basic framework of the building in, added the display cases. This morning, I added in a Bodhi tree, and found the light lacking, as well as the appearance of some 'magic' as to how these moments appeared here. So I threw everything *inside* the display cases into a light_group, and put the light on the opposite side from the windows. Hmmm... rendering already takes 1/2 and hour, but the look is much better. The tree doesn't look quite... there. Still some tweaking to do, but overall, it's a good start. 11/8 Today is all about lighting. I used to do my lighting last, but having read up on Gilles Tran's method, I think I'll try to get the atmosphere first, and then the details. So I must get the outdoor environs done, to see how they affect the scene. Then I want area lighting and media (but the media will be a bit tricky: only OUTSIDE the displays. Inside, I want a separate media statement. So, CSG boxes filled with media.) Hmmm. Lighting is being tricky. I can't get it as bright as i'd like with the sun and radiosity. Looks like it's time for some indoor lights, though I had wanted to avoid them. Composition is good, though. I'm very happy with how it look outside of the light levels. 11/11 Past couple of days spent attepting to learn to model people. Not going *that* badly... I'm also looking into projection modelling. 11/14 Been a while. I'm playing with sepia. I still can't get a lighting senario i am happy with. Oh, well, my goal was to learn good lighting techniques. I will also probable find a substitute (temporarily) for the trees. i need them to test light, but man! They take forever! 11/15 Ah ha! I blieve I have begun on my journey on the eightfold path to radios enlightenment! I tweaked a few more settings, and voila! A lighting senario that gives much color and interest, while still letting white look white. Sti;; more tweaking to do, but its much, much better. 11/16 Its definitely getting ther, but I MUST start modelling soon! Just a couple more test renders is all I can do. If it weren't for that darn glass! Garathnagar curse you, ior! You render like the sloth you truly are! Oi. Three sentences with exlamation marks in a row. Time to take a break. Wow. reading this, I realize I have spent over a week looking at lighting, and I'm not done yet. Had I started with modelling, like I normally do, I might have spen a couple of days, at the most, on environment and atmosphere. We'll see if it helps. 11/26 Wow. Over a month now, on just lighting. Not that I've had much time to work! Well, now I've got caught trying to make radiosity distribute properly over multiple procesors. Important, though, because this is going to take days to render. Hopefully I'll be ready to start that process by Christmas! Wow. Learned more about radiosity today than I ever knew. Dummy Radiosity makes So much more sense now. Yea! Now we're getting somewhere. Im about to finish the background/HDR scene. Thanks to Chris Colefax and his City Macro. I made a fairly basic scene, default perameters, rendered it with a sphercial camera, and mapped it onto a sphere it the final scene. Fast and easy, it will look even better with focal blur, and a little tweaking. 11/28 OK! Worked on the banner today, using hte ClothSim in megapov. Also tweaking the archetecture. Looked into human models to lean on the rails, or sit beneath the outdoor tree. Found plenty of models, absolutely NO suitable clothing. I'll remedy that someday, but for right now... The trees inside the glass are next, along with some media-cages I want to try out to see if I can further separate the inner scenes from the main one. 11/29 SNOW DAY DANCE! I get another day to work on this, instead of important things! Still looking, without luck, for clothing. this time for blobman. Fnishing up some benches. Looking into carpet textures, but I probably will lend up with tile. Again. OK, I made clothes for blobman, but I over-did it. I forgot to stick him in the scen to see how big/detailed it would be. Now they are just a little shmear. Admittedly, a well dressed shmear ;) Worked on the railing, made out of glass panels. The details are really helping, but I NEED to get on with the acutal focal point of the scene! 12/25 Shoot. Finals killed me. I haven't had any time to work on this, and now I'm not going to finish. On my desk are 4 pages of notes on things I need to fix. I'll get to work and see what I can do. Removed the people standing on the second floor. Just not enough time to make them look good. Added clouds to the outside scene. Added brackets under the ledge, to get a little more detail. Signs ont eh exhibits Started on the Budda scene. Used Blobman and Petnibonum for the man himself. Isosurface rocks, and some water. I wanted to add grass, no time. Spend about 3 hours on the arrows and roses. Downloaded the rose from the internet, quite a while ago, I think it's from renderosity, but I don't remember. Did the arrows in wings, so I could make half-and-half arrow-roses, but then I had no time. Bit of calculus, here and there, plus some tweaking to get the motion blur in one pass. Of course, it turns out tiny in the final scene. I'll prbably expand this into it's own image, one day. NO TIME!! I just through together Odin. The ouside will have to be blurry; I don't have time for a full 5000*5000 render. The trash can was done with wings, so was the security camera. Still tweaking radiosity, hoping to get a artefact-free render. Looks like I'll just have to deal with it though. 11/27 DONE! Or at least as done as I can be. I STILL have 3.5 pages of things that I don't like, but this is better than ny other image I've ever produced, so I am content. Rendering started this morning, with luck things will just finish in time. If you want the source, email me. I'll try and remember what all I've used here, from whom and with whose help... yay! Jeff Lee yay! Rune yay! Cristoph yay! POV Newsgroup yay! Friends & Family yay! Various and sundry helpful people