TITLE: Das Rheingold
NAME: Garry J. Vass
COUNTRY: England
EMAIL: gjv@gvass.demon.co.uk
WEBPAGE: None
TOPIC: Water
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: dr.jpg
ZIPFILE: dr.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Bryce 2, Fractal Poser & Personal Utilities

TOOLS USED: 
    Converted to JPG with Public Domain tool

RENDER TIME: 
    About 6-7 hours

HARDWARE USED: 
    200 pentium

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


This image is called, "Das Rheingold".  Hopefully, it should be instantly 
recognizable by any veteran opera buff.  It depicts the opening scene 
of Richard Wagner's opera, "Das Rheingold" (which itself is a telling 
of the Germanic legend, "The Nibelung Saga".  For those interested, 
the saga can be downloaded from the Guttenberg project.  It is, arguably, 
the father of all fairy tales.

The curtain opens at the bottom of the Rhein river where three 
"Rhein maidens" are keeping watch over a piece of enchanted gold.  The 
maidens swirl about the gold in joyous innocence of its beauty and 
power.  The gold is ultimately stolen by an evil dwarf who uses it to 
forge a magic ring and helmet.  



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


I have been working on some POV utilities that convert Bryce and 
Poser files into POV objects and textures (i.e., 'export' type 
plugins and format conversion utilities combined with POV 
plugins).  My IRTC submission for Great Engineering Acheivments was 
the first attempt, and this submission shows the progress since 
then.  With "Das Rheingold", the resulting POV/INC files are well 
in excess of 12 meg, the gold doesn't glow (like it does here), the 
caustics on the water planes still don't work right, and the normals 
are only about 300ptimized.  So there is still much work to be done.  
Sigh.  

Despite its non-POV origin (which is still within IRTC rules), I think 
"Das Rheingold" makes a good submission for the Water topic...