TITLE: Clash of the Titans
NAME: Travis Schau
COUNTRY: United States
EMAIL: Stickgod01@aol.com
WEBPAGE: www.geocities.com/povgallery/
TOPIC: Wilderness
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: tssquid.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray, Spatch, Paint Shop Pro

RENDER TIME: 
    20 Minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 500, 128 ram

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

A sperm whale and a giant squid battle deep underwater. This is my
interpretation of this never witnessed scene. Although a real giant squid would
be a little bit smaller, for the sake of visibility (and to make it a more
exciting battle), I took some liberty in enlarging this one. Aside from this,
almost everything is as it should be. The fish (called Hoki) are real
deep-water fish that the giant squid feeds on, and measure 2-3 feet (a little
under a meter)long.

Contrary to information on several websites I've visited looking for info on the
giant squid, squids do not eat whales. Sperm whales, however, have been known
to eat giant squids on occasion. In a case like the one in my image, the squid
would be seeking to escape, not kill and devour the whale.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

I modelled the squid and whale in Spatch. I really enjoyed making them. The fish
were also modelled in Spatch.

For the squids eye, the fishes eye, the spots on the squid, and the lighter
color around the sperm whales mouth (can't forget that!), I used imagemaps I
created by hand in Paint Shop Pro. I saw little way to create these textures
with Pov. I wouldn't have been able to get the spots on the squid to taper
down, and I couldn't think of any decent way to make the eyes. All other
textures were created procedurally.

The water I used is two layers of fog. I spent quite a while testing out
scattering medias, but they altered all the colors in the image, and added very
little. I tried using focal blur on the fish in the foreground, but again, I
felt it added nothing, and only took away from the realism of the fish.
Although I realize this image is somewhat dark, remember that this scene would
be taking place at over a thousand feet down in the ocean, and it would
actually be far darker. I used radiosity and two spotlights for the lighting.

All the elements of this scene were created by me. If you have any questions or
comments, feel free to E-mail me. If you want any of the source (the POV script
or the Moray file or any of the Spatch files), I'd be more than happy to send
it to you. Hopefully you'll enjoy looking at this image as much as I enjoyed
making it.