TITLE: There is a cow in my bathtub!
NAME: Mika Nieminen
COUNTRY: Finland
EMAIL: warp@iki.fi
WEBPAGE: http://iki.fi/warp/
TOPIC: Water
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: cowbath.jpg
ZIPFILE: cowbath.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1

TOOLS USED: 

  - wctl2pov (I hope I remembered the name right...) for converting the cow
      mesh from dxf -> pov
  - My Povray Triangle Mesh Smoother, for smoothing the cow mesh
  - My Povray Triangle Mesh Compressor, for compressing the cow mesh (the mesh
      file size reduced by 87%)
  - Povray Compressed Mesh Macro by Chris Colefax, to read the compressed mesh
  - Lens Effects Include File, by Chris Colefax
  - Moray 2.5, for bezier patches
  - TorPatch, by Mark Mackey


RENDER TIME: 
    About 5 hours real time, 15h 30min CPU-time (7 computers)

HARDWARE USED: 
    486DX2 66MHz for modelling, 7 Pentium 150MHz for final rendering

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


  Imagine that one morning you awake and go to the bathroom for a shower...
  "What the...? There is a cow in my bathtub!"

  I don't remember how I got this silly idea, but I just HAD to accomplish it.
I know it's slightly off topic, but not very much anyways... :)


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


  The cow model is not mine (I really don't have the tools or the knowledge to
make that good model, but the image MUST have a cow, so...), everything else
is. The interior of the bathtub and the sink are bezier patches made with
Moray.
  Sorry for this "advertisement", but the compressed mesh file is very handy.
The mesh file size reduced by about 87% (the original pov mesh file was about
1.4 Megs and the compressed file is 322k) and the meshes are very easy to
handle with the PCM-macro. Also parsing time doesn't grow considerably.
(end of advertisement ;) )
  The rendering times may seem slightly odd. Let me explain a bit:
  I started the rendering with one computer (Pentium 150MHz) in a computer
lab in this school. After about an hour I noticed that it would take forever.
Then I started the rendering in two other computers (one starting from line
200 and the other from line 400). Once again, after about an hour, it still
seemed to take forever. Then I took 2 computers more, and after a bit, 2 more
(totaling 7 computers).
  So the time I spent rendering was about 5 hours (the first computer rendered
174 lines in 4h 33min and the last computer spent about a half of an hour more,
after the first computer was finalized). The rendering times and lines were
as follows:
  Computer 1: lines 1-174, 4h 33min
  Computer 2: lines 175-199, 1h 20min
  Computer 3: lines 200-249, 1h 47min
  Computer 4: lines 250-299, 2h 5min
  Computer 5: lines 300-349, 1h 51min
  Computer 6: lines 350-399, 1h 19min
  Computer 2: lines 400-499, 1h 40min (I reused this computer)
  Computer 7: lines 500-600, 54min

  So total CPU time was about 15h 30min.
  Managing all this "renderfarm" was pretty tricky...