EMAIL: poorcocoboiboi@yahoo.ca NAME: Murray Pearson TOPIC: Complexity COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: A Complex Dragon COUNTRY: Canada WEBPAGE: http://pingu.autographic.ca/dragon_irtc/ RENDERER USED: MacMegaPOV 1.2.1 Universal Binary version TOOLS USED: MacMegaPOV RENDER TIME: 6 hours 11 minutes 8 seconds (22268 seconds) HARDWARE USED: Mac Mini Core Duo 1.8GHz, 2GB RAM IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The adventurer was weary; for more time than he cared to think he had been digging through the hinterlands of calculus, trying to resurrect long-lost skills. Suddenly, while leaning inward to examine a convoluted function, he finds himself staring into the eyes of a dragon. It's that diabolical worm, Complexity! DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: This image originated out of isosurface experiemnts, playing around with combinations of functions to polish up my calculus skills in preparation for returning to college in engineering in January 2007. (POV-Ray seems like an excellent tool for visualization in an engineering context!) This was in early November, shortly after the topic had been announced. I was playing around with a combination of several functions when I moved in the camera very close -- in fact, the cutaway front surface of the isosurface is due to intersection with the camera's view frustrum. Imagine my surprise when I suddenly found myself staring into the eye of a dragon! It occurred to me that I had an excellent concept for the new IRTC topic, and almost 45 days to allow the image to mature and evolve. In the end the scene wound up being one of the very simplest POV-Ray scenes I have ever created. It consists of the following objects: 1 isosurface, called the "Dragonball" 1 sphere for the dragon's pupil, which supplies artistic focus to the image 1 perspective camera, intersecting the isosurface and the pupil 2 media objects: - 1 absorbing 'smoke' pattern throughout the image - 1 emitting green cloud in the dragon's 'belly' 1 sky sphere with a gradient pigment 3 photon light sources And that's it. In the ensuing weeks I have made subtle tuning changes to the image, specifically adding the pupil and media objects. The pupil was positioned essentially by trial and error, finding a rough position by turning off refraction in the Dragonball and then playing around. It took about five renderings to finalize its position and size. The index of refraction of the Dragonball is 0.9, which is critical: much lower and total external reflection hides the dragon; much closer to one and the Dragonball doesn't bend the light enough to make the dragon visible. Acknowledgements I want to express my gratitude to the IRTC and the global raytracing community. Thanks to David Buck for starting POV-Ray, and thanks to Yvo and Rene Smellenbergh for the excellent Mac port of MegaPOV -- keep up the good work guys! I have also benefited from programming contributions of Chris Colefax, Ingo Janssen and others. Finally, I owe a greater debt than I can describe to the masters of this art form who show us all what is possible; every time I see Gilles Tran's art I am moved and humbled.