TITLE: Electric Lamp NAME: Martin Roth COUNTRY: Switzerland EMAIL: roth@ens.ascom.ch WEBPAGE: www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Way/2571 TOPIC: Great Engineering Achievements COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION JPGFILE: elamp.jpg RENDERER USED: povray 3.01 TOOLS USED: LView for conversion RENDER TIME: 60h 17min HARDWARE USED: Sparc Ultra 1 IMAGE DESCRIPTION: There's not much to say, really. I'm trying to show what could be a physic professor's latest gadget, some years after Thomas Alva Edison came up with the great idea to use electricity to make light. I hope this still fits the topic. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Firstly I made the fine wire, which is a union of 3000 spheres. Since that didn't look bright enough I put 30 spherical halos around them. The hardest part was to get the glas right, in order to make it look "ancient". It's a Surface Of Revolution, it took me some time to put the points correctly. Is there a tool for doing this? The glass is actually hollow (like in the real world), i.e. not just a SOR, but a SOR with a smaller SOR cut out of it. Since this is not visible in the image I might have skipped this part, making the rendering faster. I'll try this now... The other objects are simple CSGs, exept for the plaque, which is a height field. What made the rendering take so long is the number of light sources: There is one where the camera is and 5 in the light bulb. With just 2 light sources it took only 10 hours, but then I had very stong, unrealistic looking shadows under the bulb. If you'd like the source file, feel free to email me.