TITLE: raytrace
NAME: Claude Guillemot
COUNTRY: france
EMAIL: cguille@hol.fr
WEBPAGE: http://wwwperso.hol.fr/~cguillem
TOPIC: night
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
RENDERER USED: Pov-ray
TOOLS USED: photoshop for heightfields
RENDER TIME: 16 hours
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
As soon as the theme was known, I got the very idea of what I would realise.
It was not yet the precise vision of a picture, but the feeling of an atmosphere and the strong wish to translate it into a picture.

That night I foresee and already call "Raytrace" is the night of the computer taking over my own work to give birth to the picture. Alone, the computer will calculate each point, pixel after pixel, line after line...
The strange "starry night" from the screen saver hides the patient work.
I had to work, myself, days and weeks to create each part of the "picture to be". I had just seen a few parts of it, some drafts, but before this night, nothing had really existed yet.
That's Ray Tracing's hard rule, and I would hope that this image of my deserted office where only the computer works in the darkness among my familiars tools tells about it.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
All the objects have been specially created for this picture, straight on Pov-Ray, without any modeller. 
A highfield (the books sides) and five map pictures were created with photoshop (the note pad, the clock face, the protractor partitions, the Pov book and the disket cover). The monitor image is a screen copy of "After dark".
The most subtle work has been the lighting.
Six light sources were used :
   - An area Light (spotlight 85°) at the screen position creates the soft yellow light from the screen saver.
   - A point light, slightly blue, coming from outside through the window, represents the moon light.
   - A second arealight, very weak (0,08) from the ceiling being the camera on the right, softly illuminates the front shadows of the objects (so, I dont have to increase the value of "ambient" more than 0.05).
   - A low light from the street lamp touches only the curtain (halo).
   - An orange source, with very short fade out, represents the gleamy light of the plugs.
   - An inside light illuminates the clock.

The balance of the different productions of light was difficult to establish.
Let's just hope that all this subtle work will show reliably on various machines...