EMAIL: parallel94_53tx@hotmail.com
NAME: Johnny Yip
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION
TOPIC: Sea
TITLE: Remember the Valdez Spill
COUNTRY: Canada
WEBPAGE: None
RENDERER USED: POVRay 3.1

TOOLS USED: POVRay 3.1  - for typing in the source code
			- generate some height fields
	    Photoshop 4 - conversion of image to JPG
		        - edit the sea height field
			- adding my name
	    Terragen v0.8 - sky background

RENDER TIME: 2hr 37min for the sky background
             3hr 34min 33s for the image

HARDWARE USED:

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
On March 24, 1989, Exxon Valdez, an American oil tanker went aground on a
reef in Prince Williams Sound, Alaska.  260,000 barrels of oil were leaked
from the vessel, this was the largest oil spill in U.S. history.  The
coastline was coated with oil, hundreds of thousands of birds as well as 
many other sea mammals were killed.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
1) The oil tanker
The whole tanker is basically a combination of CSG objects.  The front
part of the tanker is a cut-out part of a torus (I actually figured out
how to construct that shape a three days before the deadline, phew! that
was lucky), the mid section is a CSG box and the tail part is a cylinder.
Due to the inavailability of detailed images of the Exxon Valdez, some
of the objects on the E.V. are created based on other tankers (such as the
light towers, which are obtained from "Knock Whallins").  All the objects
on the tanker are CSG's.  All textures are made just for E.V.

2) Height fields
The sea, the beach, the mountains and the rocks are all height fields.
The reason that I gave high iridescence value to the oil is to contrast
the difference between the normal water and the polluted water, I am also
hoping that the result will look more "artistic".  The sea's height field
is retouched to match the beach as well as the rock in the oil.

3) The birds (they are actually egrets)
Blobs for the bodies and cones for the beaks.  Phong highlights were use 
for their surface textures, which should make the oils on their body look
"thicker".

4) The sky
The sky is rendered using Terragen, then image mapped onto a sky_sphere

5) The morning fog
I didn't use the fog feature in Povray because it doesn't give much freedom
towards "variable fog". Sometimes the fog you see near water during sunrise
are not a just simple ground_fog, that's why media was used since they can
better represent "smoky fog".  Again, I hope they will look more " artistic"
that way =)

REMARKS:
Any questions, suggestions, comments regarding the image or the source code,
just drop me a mail.  Sorry that I can't post the source code because my
pov's and inc's are rather messy (ie. bad variable names, such as LBSB_w
for "lifeboat support beam's width", and guess what is "Lvl3_DB_t")