EMAIL: pbjunk@wowway.com NAME: Phil Brewer TOPIC: From Rubbage Bin to Junkyard COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Quincy COUNTRY: US RENDERER USED: PovRay 3.6 TOOLS USED: XFrog for tree and plant models Rhino 3D for file conversion Paint Shop Pro X for heightfield tweaking, some textures, and conversion to jpeg Gilles Tran's MakeCloud macros GForge and HF-lab for heightfield generation and tweaking PM 2Ring's catenary macro RENDER TIME: Parse time: 1h 47m, Render time: 35h 57m HARDWARE USED: AMD 64 3200+ (2.0GHz), 2GB RAM, WinXP IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The Quincy Mine #2 Shafthouse. Located in Hancock, MI, the Quincy #2 is just one of many mine relics left over from the Keweenaw's copper boom during the early 1900's. Now, with the rare exception of a few sites maintained by historical organizations, the leftovers of the Keweenaw's mining operations only exist as junk littering the countryside. The Keweenaw Peninsula is about 1000 square miles (2500 quare km) of land jutting into Lake Superior on the very northern edge of Michigan's upper peninsula. In 1840-1841 the land was surveyed by Douglass Houghton who reported large mineral deposits, especially copper. Congress purchased the land from the Chippewa tribe of Native Americans in 1842 and re-sold it to the public. During the next 20 years, 94 mining companies operated in the area. Of the 94, only 8 were profitable. Between 1845 and 1925, 7.5 billion pounds of ingot copper were taken from the Keweenaw. By around 1930, the price of copper had fallen to the point where it was no longer profitable to run the mines. They experienced a brief re-opening during WWII, but then closed for good. The Quincy Mining Company was formed in 1846. Quincy was one of the more profitable companies and provided dividends to stockholders from 1867 through 1921. This led to the company being known as "old reliable". The #2 Shafthouse pictured is located in Hancock, MI. The steam hoist used to lower and raise workers and materials into the mine is the largest steam-powered hoist engine ever built and reached a depth of over 9000 feet (2700 m). It could lift 10 tons (9 metric tons) of rock from the mine at a speed of 36mph (60 kph). The shafthouse building, along with the hoisthouse, steam hoist and surrounding properties are now maintained by the Quincy Mine Hoist Association, a non-profit organization created to preserve Quincy's history and the steam hoist. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: The main objects in the scene (two buildings and framework) were based off of some pictures I took, as well as reference pictures I found online. I was also able to find some mechanical drawings in the library of congress archives that I could scale off of for dimensions. Those were a huge help. // Shafthouse // The Shafthouse (grey steel-sided building) is all CSG construction. The main texture uses a normal for the corrugation, with an overlaying image_map to add some light rust. I then used a greyscale image as an image pattern with several copies of the base texture to break up the colors and patterns to give it a "patchwork" look. The rust texture on the framework and giant steel "cylinder" are procedural textures. Just a lot of playing around with the colors and patterns. The texture on the concrete base under the giant steel "cylinder" is mainly an image map, but with an underlying procedural base and normal. The windows are created with a macro that randomly leaves out panes of glass to make them look broken. The glass texture is reflective, but with a hazy film over some of the surface to make it look dirty and weathered. // Cable Support // The large steel framework was used to support the hoist cable between the shafthouse and hoisthouse. It is modeled with CSG with the help of PM 2Ring's catenary macro to drape cables between points. I tried writing my own macro to use sphere_sweeps on a parabolic shape, but it didn't look nearly as good. I used macros for some of the more repetetive CSG tasks. The texture is the same procedural texture used on the framework attached to the shafthouse. // Old Hoisthouse // The stone building next to the shafthouse is an older hoisthouse. It held one of the earlier hoists (as the mine went deeper, equipment was constantly upgraded). The stone walls are created with a macro I wrote. It uses an image as a mask and places isosurface blocks in a series of steps on the wall. The first step creates large blocks randomly around the wall. The second step fills in the remaining gaps so the wall is mostly full. I use an array to keep track of what areas are occupied and what areas off-limits (from the mask). It's not a very elegant macro, but it works. A heightfield fills in the mortar gaps. The roof is a prism using some of the same texture from the shafthouse. The large rust area is an image map. // Ground // The ground consists of two heightfields. One close to the camera and one further away. The heightfields were tweaked in Paint Shop Pro to mask off areas not seen (helps once we get to plants). The trees and plants are Xfrog models. They're randomly placed with an eval_pigment function and some images giving me some more control. There are two types of tree models, one bush model, one grass model, and two flower models. // Misc // The sky is a sky_sphere with a couple of Gilles Tran's media clouds scaled very large to turn them into cirrus clouds. The power lines in the background are created with a simple macro, and I use the catenary macro once again for the power cables. The rail cars are CSG, with a chain created with the catenary macro. Rocks on them are isosurfaces randomly placed. The hawk in the sky is just an image map on a box. Created from a picture I took. The pile of poor rock in the background is a coarse mesh from Rhino peppered with isosurface boulders. The skip (ore bucket) in the foreground is also CSG. The texture is the same used on the two pieces of framework, but you can see some of the detail this close up. Lighting is from one parallel light source acting as the sun. Radiosity fills in the blanks. There is a very minor ground fog to mimic atmospheric haze. I used some minor focal blur to give the image some depth. I've included a source zip (minus some large images and meshes), but it's not pretty. =)