EMAIL: cfusner@enter.net
NAME: Charles Fusner
TOPIC: Night
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: "COLD HEARTED ORB THAT RULES THE NIGHT"
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: http://www.enter.net/~cfusner
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.02
TOOLS USED: Paint Shop Pro, MORAY, Rhino, and scratch paper 
for a bit of basic trig I needed to set some of it up.
RENDER TIME: 14 hours, 37 minutes.
HARDWARE USED: Pentium 150
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

"COLD HEARTED ORB THAT RULES THE NIGHT"

"Upon the raised mound by village end;
There atop the temple's roof-top dais,
before the altar of Seline-on-High; 
With offerings prepared, and fires alight,
the temple priest to the Cold Hearted Orb
gives a benediction to his goddess.

"And She, looking coldly down from her Court,
crowned with corona of frozen fire;
Outshines her courtiers, the wand'ring stars,
smiles frostily upon this earthly scene,
and sets her hard won blessing in the sky 
in the fleeting form of the tailed star."


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THE SCENE WAS MADE:

THE CONCEPT:
For the first time, I conceived this image on the very day 
I read the announcement of the new topic. Free associating
on the word "Night" what first came to mind was the lines
by the Moody Blues: "Cold hearted orb, that rules the night/
removes the colors from our sight/ red is grey, and yellow, 
white/ but we decide which is right/ and which is an illusion..."

My first idea to represent this graphically was half raytrace,
half postprocessing to play upon the words "removes the color
from our sight", but of course, the post-processing part would
have been inappropriate for the IRTC. So I revised the concept,
instead envisioning some cold hearted, and demanding goddess
of some ancient peoples, demanding nightly tribute and prayer 
from her servants. That was where the altar with its offerings, 
and the priest came into the scene. 

THE PRIEST FIGURE:
The priest is my first successful effort with Rhino modeller.
With it's NURBS based modelling capabilities, and the ability
to export directly to POV or MORAY UDO, it was easy enough to
construct the fellow, and export the right hand to UDO so
that I could place the CSG staff directly into it saving a
lot of trial and error.

THE TOWERS:
The dais with its central and secondary towers were laid out 
by hand, using POV-Ray's trig functions to good advantage. 
Not only did I find it easier than trying to graphically lay
out regular hexagons, but it enables a new technique I've just
started experimenting with here: notice how no two successive
faces of the stone towers have exactly the same stonemap texture.
Multiple stonefaces were used (for exactly this purpose) to 
break up the pattern and make it tougher for the eye to spot
the repetition in the map.

THE SKIES:
The skies are many layers deep, using a random star backdrop,
generated proceedurally with wrinkles, then a layer with 
multiple image_maps of recognizable (if not necessarily 
astronomically accurate) constellations, and the shooting star.
After that the halo of the moon's icy haze (to enchance the "cold" 
feel to the moon), then the moon sphere itself, followed by 
an innermost layer that places those mapped clouds right where
I wanted them. Okay, a little more complex than a "cast off"
sky texture, but it gives the effect I wanted (and, incidently
has the longest rendering time of the whole piece, due
to all the transparency in the layers).

DETAILS ARE EVERYTHING!
As a contrast to some of my simpler works in the past, note 
the many finishing details: the blackened iron spikes holding
the wooden beams in place, the symbols painted on the urns 
and offering jugs, the decorative heels of the priest's staff 
(which you can only just make out in this scene). Even a 
separate light source for each of the towers with windows, to 
give just a hint that this structure has an interior, and make 
the viewer wonder what it must look like inside. Lastly, when 
all was in place, I wrote the twelve lines (in blank verse, 
you'll notice) from the image description above, to supplement 
the image itself.