EMAIL:Ewen.Tony@cabs.com.au NAME:Tony Ewen TOPIC:Childhold COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE:Toddler's Toybox COUNTRY:Australia RENDERER USED:POV-Ray 3.0 TOOLS USED:POV, Corel PhotoPaint 5 (JPG conversion and image map for the scrapbook) , graph paper and associated tools for modelling RENDER TIME:4.5 days HARDWARE USED:Pentium 100 notebook IMAGE DESCRIPTION:A Toddler's eye view of several of his toys. I got some funny looks from my son when I grabbed his toys and started measuring! DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: This collection of childhood objects belongs to my eldest son, which made the modelling somewhat easier. As I did all the modelling using graph paper and a tape measure, I was able to get the scaling done right - important considering that the camera was positioned at the same height as Joshua's eyes (yes, I did measure that too). The modelling and texturing was done using the traditional POV inductive approach - type it in, render a sample, check the results, repeat to taste. If you look at the source code, you'll notice that I put a switch in the toy crate to turn the holes on and off. With the holes off the image rendered at full size with anti-aliasing on in about an hour. With the holes off it took over 4 days (those shadows took a while). The observer will note that the texturing for most of these objects is very simple. This is deliberate. I wanted to capture the simplicity of view that I imagine a child has. In addition - most of the objects are made of a flat plastic. I also simplified the modelling in some cases - particularly the castors on the crate. Modelling the castors completely accurately would have worked, but would not have added to the image as most of the details would not have been visible. I did the same for the spade. I've done some stuff in TrueSpace as well and had some concerns about how POV would handle a "real" image (this is my first significant rendering in POV) with no modeller. Some of the things that proved easy to do in POV (like the hole switch, for example) would have been impossible in TS. Other things, like texturing and the scrapbook pages, proved also to be quite easy to do - easier that TS. I didn't even miss the modeller that much. Why didn't I use a modeller for this one? Two reasons - the first reason was that I wanted this to be as much as possible "pure" POV. It's as much a learning exercise as anything. The other was that I'm yet to find a POV modeller that I like. There you have it, nothing spectacularly technical, just patience and a little forethought. Hope you like it.