EMAIL: mick@minda.softnet.co.uk
NAME: Mick Hazelgrove
TOPIC: Night
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Magical African Nights
COUNTRY: UK
WEBPAGE:
RENDERER USED: Pov Ray
TOOLS USED: Corel Draw7 to convert pic to jpg
RENDER TIME: 4hrs 32 mins (with radiosity 1hr 30 without)
HARDWARE USED: 300mhz Pentium 2 with 128mb ram 
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: This is my third Pov Ray picture and by far the best. 
I wanted to produce an image based on ethnic art with its connotations of magic,  hence the witch doctor! The head is based on a wooden Secret society figure of the Yassi tribe of Sierra Leone. 
The snake is a common magical symbol and a challenge. The birds heads were also a challenge I could not resist and were inspired by an african stone carving. The title sums up the effect I wanted and the relevance of the picture to the theme.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

As I wanted a crude ethnic effect I decided not to use modelers but to use CSG operations instead. The head is constructed out of spheres cylinders and Torii. The snake is constructed entirely of spheres. The bird's beaks were made from spheres scaled into ellipses and intersected with other ellipses. I had to make a left half and a right half to get the right shape.
The flames are simple halos and everything else is made from textures. The halo containers caused endless trouble, as where they overlapped other objects that use transmittance they caused shadows. This was the biggest single problem I had. If this problem can be solved in future versions of Pov it will open up endless possibilities for atmospheric effects. I kept the lighting simple for a dramatic effect but it could do with some more tweaking. Textures are generally developed from those that come with Pov Ray but one or two have been created from scratch. I relied heavily on rotations for various effects, I'm sure there are better and simpler ways of doing them but I'm an artist and a poor mathematician. One day I must create a general purpose rotation inc file that will do all these effects. Talking about rotations I' m disappointed that the earrings don't show well but I can't think what else to do with them. Ah well, you can't win'em all. The stars were based on techniques learnt from Chris Colfax's superb Galaxy file. I had a lot of fun and learnt a huge amount producing this picture. I could go on fiddling with it for ages but my family are beginning to complain and work to suffer.