TITLE: Golden Gate Fog
NAME: Bob Franke
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: bobfranke@halcyon.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.halcyon.com/wordsltd/pov/pov.htm
TOPIC: Landmarks
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: goldgate.jpg
ZIPFILE: goldgate.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1g for Windows 95/98/NT

TOOLS USED: 
    Golden Gate Engineering Drawings,
Bob Franke's wDem2Tga, The Genesis Toolkit by Joerg Schrammel, 
Rob Antonishen's Chain include file, EZCosmos, Lview Pro for jpeg 
conversion and copyright, POV editor

RENDER TIME: 
    21hr 7min

HARDWARE USED: 
    generic Pentium-III w/ 256 Mb RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

This is a possible view of the Golden Gate Bridge, about one hour 
after sunrise on 12/19/1937.  This is the first winter for the 
bridge.  The pollution free winter sky is crystal clear and the 
paint is still bright and shiny.  I have wanted to do this image 
for a long time and now the IRTC has given me the time.

Some Bridge Facts:
Construction began January 5,1933
Opening Day: May 28, 1937
Eleven workers died during construction.
Total length of Bridge including approaches:
   1.7 miles = 8,981 ft = 2,737 m
Distance between towers: 4,200 ft = 1,280 m
Width of Bridge: 90 ft = 27 m
Height of tower above water: 746 ft = 227 m
Clearance above mean higher high water: 220 ft = 67 m
Deepest foundation below mean low water: 110 ft = 34m



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

This was an interesting experiment in how much detail should be 
shown.  The image was actually improved by removing some of the 
smaller items.  Most notably were the handrails along the 
sidewalks. They had severe "jaggies" that could not be removed 
with anti-aliasing.

I ordered a set of drawings from the Golden Gate Bridge web site 
at URL http://www.goldengate.org.  The bridge is all CSG with a 
lot of boxes, cylinders and prisms.  With the help of several 
IRTC-L members the bridge is painted international orange.  The 
standard paint scheme is used.  If it's metal, paint it orange.  
The main suspension cables were done with Rob Antonishen's Chain 
include file.

The smaller suspender cables are a disappointment.  To get them 
to show up, I had to make them quite a bit larger than their 
actual size.  If they traced exactly vertical, I think they would 
have worked at their actual diameter. 

The fog is a combination of ground fog and scattering media.

The clouds are scattering media at 20,000 feet.

The sun and moon are located at only 600,000 feet.  EZCosmos was 
used to get their altitude and azimuth for 8:30 AM on 12/19/1937. 
I chose to show a full moon, even though it was actually 94% full 
at this time.

I downloaded the 1:250,000-Scale Digital Elevation
Model (DEM) data for San Francisco from URL
http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/doc/edchome/ndcdb/ndcdb.html and
I used my wDem2Tga program to create the heightfield.  Because 
the resolution of the data is about one point every 300 feet, the 
hills are only approximately correct.

Finally, I used the Genesis Toolkit to add 14,227 trees to the 
hills.  Each tree is a 75-foot tall randomly scaled and rotated 
cone.  The cone has a bozo green and clear pigment.  From a 
distance it makes a pretty good tree.

Well, that's about it.  I hope you like the image.