EMAIL: mj_murf@mindspring.com
NAME: Mark J. Murphy  
TOPIC: Childhood 
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Timeless Toys
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: none
RENDERER USED: POVRAY 3.00e  (Windows95)
TOOLS USED: Microsoft Image Composer 1.0 (for Board imagemap, JPG conversion)
RENDER TIME: 4 hours, 48 minutes
HARDWARE USED: Pentium-166, 32MB

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

I took a look at my children's toy room to see what looked familiar, toys
which are as popular today as well as when I was young. Three of them
instantly caught my attention: TinkerToys, Legos and (my favorite) the
Mousetrap game. (For those unfamiliar with this game, Mousetrap is a board
game wherein a convoluted mousetrap is constructed piece-by-piece, and
actually operates to catch the mouse.)

My image is composed of the Mousetrap game with the trap partially completed,
a TinkerToy house, and a Lego airplane (built similarly to the Lego toy model
currently being given out in the 'Child' meal packs at a local Submarine
sandwich shop). 

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

I am relatively new to computer graphics. I have been experimenting with
POVRAY for about a year, and this is the fourth 'real' scene I've modeled.
I realize that I need to gain alot more knowledge, particularly in the areas
of lighting and 'irregular' shapes. I do not know how to use blobs, patches
or splines yet, so I had to make-do with clipped and scaled cylinders and
torii for any special shapes I needed.

I didn't use any modellers to create the objects, just a ruler and some
graph paper. Each object was created separately and is placed in its' own
Include file. Each item can be rendered in high-res, low-res or completely
omitted by setting variables at the start of the POV file. This made it easy
to focus on particular items while speeding up the render tests.

All source files are included in the Zipfile, with the exception of the 
imagemap (which was too large).

I relied heavily on POVRAY's CSG features when constructing the objects. I
also found the Prism object (for extruding polygons) to be very useful for
irregular shapes such as the plastic wheels and the bases of the plastic
parts.

The scrollwork on the yellow post and the green boot were the toughest items
to model. They are the results of many trial-and-error renderings until I got
them right.

The painted wood surfaces, and the simulated wood on the plastic wheels, were
created by taking a normal wood texture and modifying its' material-map to
represent different shades of the same color. Thus, the woodgrain can still
be seen under the 'paint'.

The board was made with an image-map I created with MS Image Composer.

I had to guess at the actual lengths of the colored wooden rods in The
TinkerToy house. My kids have the newer plastic ones, but I still prefer the
old wooden ones. 

I decided that the Lego plane should be standing up on its' end (like the
Space Shuttle). The detail would be nearly invisible if the plane were lying
flat on the floor. The angled bricks at the top of the plane are clear
plastic. As I can never get all the Lego brick to fit exactly flat and
square, I added a little variance in the placement of the bricks to be more
realistic.

Finally, the dice and the electrical outlet used the Superellipsoid as their
shape.