TITLE: The Sailing Fortress
NAME: Gena Obukhov
COUNTRY: Russia
EMAIL: obukhov@mail.com
WEBPAGE: http://propro.ru/go/gallery.html
TOPIC: Fortress
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: gofortrs.jpg
ZIPFILE: gofortrs.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    MegaPov 0.7

TOOLS USED: 
    pen, graph paper, sPatch, Photoshop

RENDER TIME: 
    27 h.


HARDWARE USED: 
    PIII 600MHz 128Mb


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

From the beginning I decided to create a sailing ship 
which sails to the fortress. Working on the ship I 
realized that the ship itself looks like a fortress.
Therefore the real fortress was transformed just into
glowing lights on the horizon :)
The main challenge for me in this scene was to create...
the night. It's always a trade-off between ambient and 
diffuse colors. If you use too many  ambient colors you 
will get too glowing scene. On the other hand, if you 
use too many diffuse colors the scene and shadows become 
too dark. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

I used many reference images which I found in different
sources. The main source was a book: "Ultimate Visual
Dictionary 2001". Using those reference images I prepared
detailed sketches on a graph paper. Then those sketches were
transfered into POV-Ray. After that I textured the objects 
in the scene. The ship is not a replica of any existed ship.
This is just a compilation. Here is the detailed description 
of all objects:
- sky is a stack of planes (IMHO this approach makes the 
  best sky in POV-Ray :)
- sea is an isosurface (IMHO this approach makes the best 
  water in POV-Ray :)
- base for body of the ship is a sphere. Texture for 
  body was prepared in Photoshop. I tried to use "embedded" 
  wood textures but it looked too regular and artificial to me.
- ornament in the back of the ship is a height field. The image
  was drawn in Photoshop.
- Russian Navy flag is sPatch model. The texture for flag was 
  drawn in Photoshop and mapped to bicubic patches using planar 
  mapping. Such approach works fine for simple and almost flat 
  surfaces. You don't have to use complicated uv mapping in that 
  case.
- Jacob's ladder is sPatch model
- windows were drawn in Photoshop and mapped using planar and
  cylindrical mapping
- lights on the ship are "glow" objects combined with real light
  sources.
- all masts and ropes around them are primitive POV-Ray objects
  and CSG objects. A lot of trigonometrical calculations were
  involved here.
- all sales and ropes around them were modeled in sPatch.
- lights on the horizon are "glow" objects.
- guns are CSG objects.