TITLE:          Urban Tree
NAME:           Jaime Vives Piqueres
COUNTRY:        Valencia, Espaņa 
EMAIL:          jaime@ctav.es
WEBPAGE:        www.ctav.es/jaime (mirror: members.xoom.com/jaimevives)
TOPIC:          GARDENS
COPYRIGHT:      I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
RENDERER USED:  POV-Ray 3.1g for Linux ((C) POV-Team)
TOOLS USED:     - Kwrite ((C)KDE) and ved ((?)me), to write the POV scripts
                - The Gimp ((C) Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis), to convert 
                  PNG to JPG, and for some HF painting/editing.
RENDER TIME:    

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Time For Parse:    0 hours  0 minutes  15.0 seconds (15 seconds)
Time For Trace:    8 hours  2 minutes  51.0 seconds (28971 seconds)
    Total Time:    8 hours  3 minutes   6.0 seconds (28986 seconds)
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Hmmm... how? Last time it was 12 hours, and I only added another light! :{

HARDWARE USED:  Intel P-II 450 (500 overcloked), 64MB RAM, running Linux 2.2.5

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

  A lonely urban tree at night.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

    I expended about 2 seconds to arrive to the conclusion that more than 2 or 3
  of my trees on the same scene, is too much for my RAM and/or patience. So, I 
  needed a good excuse to use only a few... the solution arrived later, when I 
  finished my job and walked to my car, parked some streets away, just in front 
  of a lonely orange tree on the sidewalk. I know it's not a "real" garden, but
  what is a garden? Just that but with much more terrain and plants, isn't? ;)

    Starting with a rough "sketch" of the scene, I used the two months period 
  to enhance it slowly, object by object. The models used are "extracted" from 
  the streets of Valencia, using eye-measuring: I don't like to appear as a fool
  measuring the streets with a tape! :) I used things seen here and there to 
  create an imaginary street for my orange tree.

    After many light tweaking (fade distance, fade power and color are very 
  important for nigth scenes), the first "final" rendering was excesive, perhaps
  more than a day. So, I reduced the area_lights, perhaps too much, I know, but 
  the result doesn't looks too bad. 

    That's all. See the zip for details, and mail me if something is missing or
  not clear. As always, I've done some code-cleaning and added a few comments 
  latter, but don't expect depurated/exemplary code. My usual "muddling-along"
  programming style is even worse when I write POV scripts... ;)


  Jaime Vives Piqueres
  Valencia, 22-12-1999.