TITLE: In the high desert, the prayer flags still fly...
NAME: Joanne Simpson
COUNTRY: Australia
EMAIL: jsimpson@acm.org
WEBPAGE: N/A
TOPIC: Worship
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: desert.jpg
ZIPFILE: desert.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray 3.3, Photoshop 5

RENDER TIME: 
    47 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    AMD-K6 550 MHz, 192Mb RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

I looked for a way to bring together some of the elemental symbols and images of
worship. In the picture you will find
earth, water, air, crystal, wine, blood, stone, wood, gold, sun, moon, sea, 
fire, labrys.
You will find them in
the drifts of sand
the bathing trough
the canvas and prayer flags blown by the wind 
the glass and bowl
the seabirds
the shadow of the bird on the sand
symbolised in the wine, the colour of the flag and the carpets
the blocks
the rings that hold the fabric to the poles
and the heat of the desert
many other images of worship and reverence are hidden in the designs of the
carpets (all gabbeh and kilim) half-buried in the sand.
The desert was a simple ground in which to place the elements of worship.
There are no people because they are not required. Worship is the natural
product of an organising mind making sense of its environment. The organising
mind is implicit in the scene.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

Sand - texture mapped heightfield overlaid on a plane with the same texture
Flag and canvas - texture mapped bezier patches
carpets - heightfields mapped with images of carpets found on the Internet and
hacked around in Photoshop.
glass of wine - a group of tapers and cylinders
bowl - simple Domenator dome
Background - a constant fog and 2 ground fogs with a {0,1.0,0} configuration and
slightly different colours.
Birds - grouped bezier patches and conic sections
In the zip file are the Moray model, and the Povray include and model files. The
bitmaps were too big to include, so some textures will not work out.