EMAIL: irtc@maartendinger.net
NAME: Maarten Dinger
TOPIC: Out of Place
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Thirsting for Home
COUNTRY: New Zealand
WEBPAGE: none (yet)
RENDERER USED: Povray 3.6
TOOLS USED: AC3D for modelling. Photoshop for texture manipulation.
RENDER TIME: 2 Hr, 54 min
HARDWARE USED: Pentium IV 2.4 GHz, 1 GB RAM
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Being still relatively new to raytracing, I wanted to do the blatantly cliche planet scene, and this very broad topic was a good excuse to give it a shot. What is the most "out of place" object you can think of in space - stranded on a rock, orbiting Earth? A toilet? A mailbox? A potted plant? Looking through my various models, I finally decided to recycle a model from my IRTC Toys and Games submission (The Drunking Bird). It doesn't belong in space at all - it's a novelty item, and it's function relies on water and gravity - two things you won't find orbiting Earth. Its out of place, and wants to get back to Earth and H2O, hence the title.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:  Naturally I started out by Googling the internet for help on creating a Pov-Ray rendered Earth globe, but was surprised that I couldn't find anything I considered realistic enough (although I'm sure they must be out there, somewhere). However, I did find an excellent guide as to how to do a near photo-realistic Earth using 3D Studio Max (http://www.noirextreme.com/earth) the images needed for the globe are also available from this URL). Unfortunately, I don't have 3D Studio Max. Thus, I followed the almost step-by-step guide and figured out how to do each (to the best of my limited ability) with Povray. The Earth consists of four layers: 1) Ground Level is a colour NASA image of Earth with a topography bump map applied to give mountains and valleys some depth. 2) Sea Level is a 2-colour mask image of the water portions - a specular finish and wave normal were applied. 3) Cloud Level is another NASA image of typical clouds - transparency using a transmit routine was applied based on color - black is fully transparent moving to white which is fully opaque. A granite normal was added to give the clouds a fluffy appearance. 4) Atmosphere Level is a media statement to give a blue tint. Finally, two lightsources and radiosity were needed to properly illuminate the planet. 

I also wanted to try an isosurface (this is my first one), and the result is the rock in foreground. The Drinking Bird model was created in AC3D; I had used it before in Toys and Games (someone mentioned it was too small in that image, but I'm sure I won't get that comment this time).

The final touch is the prominant lens flare which, as per rules of the IRTC, was not added post rendering. As far as I know, there are only two lens flare "plug-ins" available for Povray: NKFlare by Nathan Kopp and Lens Effects by Chris Colefax. After many hours experimenting I opted for the latter, since it was easily (i.e. painstakingly ;-) ) customisable to give the lens effect I wanted.