EMAIL: scorpius@csi.com NAME: Anthony C. D'Agostino TOPIC: Great Engineering Achievements COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Pyramid of Geodesic Structures COUNTRY: USA WEBPAGE: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/scorpius RENDERER USED: POV-Ray(tm) 3.02.proton (POVPro) Faster than the DOS and WIN versions! ftp://terra.ru.com/pub/gamos/povray/povpro.zip TOOLS USED: POV-Ray and cjpeg RENDER TIME: 3 hours 6 minutes HARDWARE USED: Toshiba 430CDT NoteBook (120Mhz Pentium) ---------------------------------------------------------------- IMAGE DESCRIPTION: ---------------------------------------------------------------- Q. What does this image have to do with engineering? A. Well, the pyramids of Giza are considered great engineering achievements. The same can be said about geodesic domes, which are well known in the world of engineering for their light weight and rigidity. This image is a combination of the two -- it is a pyramid of geodesic structures. Q. Geodesic structures? I see a pyramid of golf balls. What are you talking about? A. The golf balls in my image have the qualities of a geodesic structure/dome. To be more specific, the dimples are arranged in a geodesic pattern. This pattern can be classified as a frequency 7 geodesic dome with an icosahedron base. The golf ball object is a model of a 'Spalding Top-Flite PLUS' golf ball. ---------------------------------------------------------------- DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: ---------------------------------------------------------------- First, I used the vector functions of POV-Ray to calculate the exact position of 492 blob components. Don't be fooled, this was not easy for me. In effect, this just creates a geodesic dome. Then, after adjusting the radius and threshold values several times, and many test renders later, the dimples on the golf ball were perfected. I also spent alot of time choosing the right colors, and tuning the area light to give the proper soft lighting effect. Finally, I went back and tuned the dimples -- even though they were nearly perfect -- until I was satisfied. Looking back, I think it might have been easier for me to model the actual pyramids of Giza or a standard geodesic dome. I wanted to do something that is somewhat different. This is the idea/image that I came up with. The image was converted with the following options: cjpeg -opt -qual 95 -sample 1x1