TITLE: Pericynthion
NAME: Sherry K. Shaw
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: tenmoons@aol.com
TOPIC: Minimalism
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: sks_peri.jpg
ZIPFILE: sks_peri.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.6.1 for Windows

TOOLS USED: 
    Photoshop

RENDER TIME: 
    3h 20m 22s for radiosity, 2h 52m 25s for final render

HARDWARE USED: 
    Athlon, 1.1 Ghz, 256 mg


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


     the light of the crescent
     moon
     reveals
        the ancient throne
        remnants of the alien corn
        images
           on ghostly paper
              of the heart's desires



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 
    The sculpture is an isosurface
object, using some stretched-out f_noise3d to simulate the grain of an old,
weathered oak board.  There are nine area_light spotlights above the sculpture
(representing a wall-mounted light fixture, somewhere above us); these lights
are brighter at the edges of the row and dimmer toward the center, to avoid
getting a big, giant glare in the middle.  There is another dim area_light over
our collective left shoulder (representing the room light), and also a small
spotlight low and in front (because I thought it needed it).  The bronze plaque
is a box with some text differenced from it.  All objects were then housed in a
hollow, pale-yellow box with just a bit of agate normal.

After getting everything the way I wanted it, the main problem was getting it to
render in my lifetime.  (After about 12 hours, the initial full-dress render
had completed something like 7 lines...)  So I ground away at the radiosity
settings and isosurface settings and lighting until I got it to a more
reasonable speed, using somewhat simplified objects for the radiosity render,
and then turning everything back on for the final render using the saved
radiosity file.  (The max_gradient for the isosurface is quite low and
generates a warning, but there didn't seem to be any gaping holes, so I tried
not to let it bother me.)

I used Photoshop to add the copyright and title and to convert to JPG.  The
source file is in sks_peri.zip.  In case you were curious, "pericynthion" is a
term for the lowest point in a lunar orbit.