TITLE: The Lake
NAME: Tekno Frannansa
COUNTRY: UK
EMAIL: tek@evilsuperbrain.com
WEBPAGE: www.evilsuperbrain.com
TOPIC: Contrast
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: the_lake.jpg
ZIPFILE: the_lake.zip
RENDERER USED:
	POV-Ray for Windows v3.1

TOOLS USED:
	POV-Ray editor

RENDER TIME:
	5h 52m 04s

HARDWARE USED:
	PentiumIII 550MHz 256MB RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

When I discovered the subject this time was contrast, I immediately thought of a yin/yang symbol. The image shows several contrasts: The light and dark, colour and grey-scale, the yin/yang symbol, and the contrast between technology and nature. I think I perhaps went a bit overboard with the whole "contrast" motif :)

Technology is portrayed by a big trail of black smoke launching the space shuttle towards the sun, and a drinks can carelessly discarded. The lake, petals, reflection of the sky, and the insect on a lily pad represent nature.

The image portrays technology as yin, the bad half, though my initial work had white smoke on a dark sky. So I ain't trying to say technology's bad or natures good or vice versa. Read into it what you will.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

The yin/yang shaped cloud of smoke comes from a cunning piece of maths I devised, to randomly position spheres within the 3D projection of the shape.

The main objects in the scene: the drinks can, shuttle, petals, insect, and lily pad are all fairly straightforward bits of CSG. The shuttle has a blob for the main body, it looked good at a distance so I  didn't bother with any details. The lily pad and petals were added last. The former because the insect wasn't round enough to form the dot of the yin/yang, and the latter because I wanted to make the plane of the lake more obvious.

The lake itself is bump mapped with two onion textures, translated to the position of the two dots of the yin/yang, and with a spherical drop off applied. Earlier in development I spent several hours lining up ripples with the feet of the insect, before deciding to put him on a lily pad, all that wasted effort...

There are a few details I would have liked to spend more time on: The drinks can isn't open, the petals have no detail, and the shuttle is a little difficult to recognise. But, I've gotta drive down to somerset for christmas, and I'm also working on an entry for the current animation competition, so I've done the best I can in the time I have.