EMAIL: brett.dickson@gmail.com
NAME: Brett Dickson
TOPIC: Forces of Nature
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Morning Ash
COUNTRY: Australia
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.6.1
TOOLS USED: The GIMP
            L3DT (http://users.tpg.com.au/blakest2/l3dt/)
RENDER TIME: 31 hours  3 minutes 59 seconds
HARDWARE USED: 3.0GHz Xeon
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
A Volcano just coughing into life; the snow around the summit not yet 
discoloured by ash.  In a few minutes and the entire mountain will be covered 
in a fine layer of ash.  At this early stage it is very easy to drop everything
and look up at the mountain and marvel at the forces at work; however viewers 
would be well advised to remember the distractive power of a large volcanic 
eruption.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
The mountain is a height field created in L3DT, then imported and scaled in 
POV-Ray.  

The tiles on the bench are made from a height field created in GIMP.  The mug 
is constructed from simple CSG objects.  

The three houses in the scene are constructed from a single macro that takes a 
number of parameters that define the various colours.  The window used in 
foreground and on the houses was built using a macro, with parameters derived 
from actual sash windows.  

The Paling fence was constructed from a macro (that takes the required length 
of fence as a parameter), using the DIY construction guide found here: 
http://www.placemakers.co.nz/can-do/fences/4_paling_fence.pdf.  

The Ash column is constructed from yet another macro that stacks spheres on top
of each other - applying random offsets to each one then adding media to 
simulate ash.