TITLE: The 5th Element
NAME: David R. Heys
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: arcana@sinbad.net
WEBPAGE: http://www.sinbad.net/~arcana
TOPIC: Elements
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: 5thelmnt.jpg
ZIPFILE: 5thelmnt.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POVray 3.02

TOOLS USED: 
    pen, paper, wahl hair trimmer (to fix the tufts pulled out)

RENDER TIME: 
    1 hour, 3 minutes, 40 seconds. Parse time, 1 minute, 14 seconds.

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 166 w. 48 MB RAM (peak memory used, 29640363 bytes)

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Deep in the depths of a circular chamber, there resides an altar dedicated to 
the ancient elements. Some force has somehow destroyed the element of earth, 
and a strange earthen creature can be seen moving around the central well. Is 
it performing some ritual to free it's bretheren? Is it seeking escape up the
spiral staircase? Perhaps..

Or maybe, just maybe, it's paying obeisance to the object hovering above
the central pool. The rare, and ofttimes misunderstood, fifth element!



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


The outer wall and staircase are superellipsoids run through #while loops. The
floor is a patterned series of superellipsoids as well. The columns are 
produced through CSG with spheres and cylinders, and a superellipsoid to fill
in the top, center portion of the caps. The well in the center of the room
is a CSG of spheres and torii. The rest of the circular floor segments are 
simply scaled torii and spheres. The broken column was produced by 
differencing the column with a heightfield. The air, water and fire icons
are all blob constructs, as is the earthen creature. Finally, the 5th element
is mostly a differenced sphere/box object run through a #while loop. I'm
particularly happy with the blending of the hot red metal to the cool black
metal as the element curves down below it's hot surface.

This scene is the result of several balked experiments. For instance, the
earthen creature initially started with an attempt in another project to
create a minaret out of blobs. Some experimenting with randomizing #while
loops had resulted in something that looked less like a tower, and more like 
an old gnarled tree stump. So, going with that image, I tried to use the same
process to create roots curling out of the stump. However, that produced
something that looked more like an articulated arm of some creature than
a tree root. I looked at the stump; I looked at the "arm"; the germ of an
idea began to form in my head; and my creature was born. He doesn't look
all that impressive in the scene, but looks fantastic when viewed close up.

One thought I'd had was to do a night time scene of a kitchen, with some 
student boiling up water for a cup of coffee during a late night cram session.
The idea being to focus on a stove element. However, talking with several 
people convinced me that this would be too obvious a choice for a scene. So,
preferring to try something a bit more off the beaten track, I scrapped the
idea and sat back to let my mind wander and see what I could come up with.
Eventually, the idea of a scene with the four traditional western elements,
and the more unusual 5th element came to being. I hope you all enjoy viewing
it as much as I enjoyed creating it. :{)

David R. Heys
arcana@sinbad.net