EMAIL: peter@table76.demon.co.uk NAME: Peter Murray TOPIC: Contrast COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Warm bear amidst cold robots WEBPAGE: http://www.table76.demon.co.uk/POV/ COUNTRY: England RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.1g.r1 Macintosh PPC TOOLS USED: Just pencil and paper, I think. RENDER TIME: Total Time: 2 hours 51 minutes 5.0 seconds (10265 seconds) Time For Parse: 0 hours 0 minutes 4.0 seconds (4 seconds) Time For Trace: 2 hours 51 minutes 1.0 seconds (10261 seconds) HARDWARE USED: Apple Macintosh G3 300MHz Desktop DISCLAIMER: No teddy bears were abandoned in heartless surroundings in the rendering of this image. IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A lost bear finds he's about the only colourful thing in an expanse of cold greyscale metal. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: This doesn't have anything to do with the idea I originally had, but I was watching Logan's Run, and there was this scene with Michael York shooting at bits of the computer, and I was thinking about making a POV-Ray set that looked cold and technical (I wasn't trying to copy the set from that film though)... ... and then I thought about the contrast of having a teddy bear in the middle of such a set, and it seemed like a good idea for this round; part of the topic expansion said: Opposites or strongly differing elements united in a scene. Hot and cold, steel and flesh, black and white, rich and poor, natural and artificial, good and evil, Linux, Mac, and MS-Windows, winter, spring, summer, and fall. Any scene bringing together and highlighting contrasts. So my contrasts here are colour/greys, warm fur/cold metal, and also the robots' pre-programmed busy activity contrasted with the lost bear's confusion. Longer description: I started by playing with metallic textures, making lots of use of the definitions in "metals.inc". The crackle and gradient patterns have been used in normal statements to detail the background, and gradient was also used to make the horizontal lines I'd sketched on the vehicles. The brick pattern was used to make the floor (and ceiling) tiles. Later I overlaid dirt textures onto the metal objects. Hopefully it's not too obvious that the pattern of dirt is the same for each object... I could have included a random rotation in the texture calls to fix that, but decided to concentrate on more visible problems. After that, I cut holes in the floor, put lights down there, and then covered them over again. I gave the covers a texture I used in the "Great Engineering Achievements" round, which just overlays two gradients at 90 degrees to each other, which are largely transparent. The lights in the scene actually illuminate the scene. The POV file does include two lights that aren't part of the scene, but I've used variables to turn those lights off for this rendering. The bear had been in the scene all through the test renders, but wasn't dressed up until after I'd used the same bear macro on a Christmas card scene. The clothing is based on the outfits the bears on the card are wearing, but I've changed the hat, the jacket and sleeves, added a belt and pockets, and changed the boots to shoes. It looks as if he's standing slightly under the surface, but I think it's actually an illusion caused by the reflection. The dark marks around his head are the text on the background train, reflected in the floor. It wasn't intentional, but one reaction has been that he looks like a Mountie! After the bear, I built a small robot "engine" and "carriages" and wrote a train macro to link them up. I made small changes to the shape of the robot "engine" over the next few weeks, giving it a more rounded front instead of the squared-off front it originally had. I also added the credits for this entry on the side. The odd round "nose" on the "engine" is meant to be a coupler, like the ones visible on the background train. The cargo in the "carriages" is contained within some sort of containers and I didn't put too much detail in them. Then I added some overhead structure for the metallic set, with rails for overhead cranes to run on. The crane doesn't "work" in the way that many of my macros do - I tend to make doors that can open and close, like the door in the back, or trains of robots that can be straight or turning a corner. As there's only one crane in this scene, I don't need to make it look slightly different from others. It's not very visible anyway, hiding up there at the top left. It's only the 14th of December - I think this is the earliest I've ever submitted an entry. I'm moving out of this house in a few days, so had to get this entry finished before then.