EMAIL:relepp@sci.fi NAME:Juha Leppälä TOPIC:Magic COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE:xcalibur COUNTRY:Finland WEBPAGE:n/a RENDERER USED:POV-Ray 3.0 for Windows TOOLS USED:Spatch to create the sword, HF-Lab and Paint Shop Pro to make the heightfields, The brilliant Lensefcts.inc by:Chris Colefax to do the sun, and Sonya Roberts new Tree-generator to do the trees. RENDER TIME:4 hours 52 mins and 40 secs HARDWARE USED:Cyrix Pentium 150 Mhz with 16 Mb memory IMAGE DESCRIPTION:It's the legendary excalibur (the sword in the stone, The sword of king Arthur , you know?!?!?!) relocated to a nice laky view. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:I started out with the lake and the sky, trying out nice textures for the lake.After trying several ripple, dent and wave normals i was starting to be annoyed :)... I started trying the bump normal and voila.The skyspheres base is from a example file by Sonya Roberts, but i twinked it a LOT to get what i wanted.After a couple of hours of test-rendering i started to create the work on the heigthfields. First i made the one where the camera is located.I used ONLY Paint Shop to make it :).After adding the shore to the image i thought it looked a bit anemic, so i made another heigthfield.I started with HF-Lab and then edited the result in Paint Shop.That hf became the (not that)far away island. Then i started playing around with the new lenseffect include file (by:Chris Colefax the genious)... First i wasn't shure what i wanted cause i didn't know what the include file could do(btw it isn't included in the zip) so i tested it until i got a sunlike effect from it (Oh man did it rock). I used the new feature that allows the object to disappear behind other objects cause i wanted a "realistic" sun.The next thing i did was the trees. I went QUICKLY through the tree include files manual (it in HTML). Then i created the trees (before them the image parsed in about 10-15 secs, but after it took over 2 mins). Then i started thinking about the REAL magic in this scene (not just the magically beatiful view),but i couldn't get anything in my mind.I started searching for something from the internet and i found a COOL program called Spatch.I started doing a dragon, but it was WAY too complicated to be my first spatch model.I started searching for a tutorial of some sort.I went back to internet and found a tutorial where one chapter was about modelling swords (sorry but i can't remember the name of the author).Without the tutorial i wouldn't have such a nice blade in my sword.That's just about it :). BTW.PLEASE FORGIVE ME MY BAD ENGLISH!!!!!!