EMAIL: gshaw@monotix.co.za
NAME: Gail Shaw
TOPIC: Mystic and Fantasy
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Here there be Dragons
COUNTRY: South Africa
WEBPAGE: http://www.rucus.ru.ac.za/~gail/
RENDERER USED: Megapov 0.7
TOOLS USED: Rhino 3d 1.1
            Poser
            Pose2pov
            Leveller
            Paint Shop Pro
            Warp's Mesh Compressor
RENDER TIME: 4 hrs 15 min
HARDWARE USED: Athlon 1GHz 256 MB Memory
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

"Don't worry so much. There hasn't been a dragon here for years"

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

I started by modelling some of the objects I needed. I created a helm and a ring
in Rhino. The sword and shield are both Pov objects from previous images.

I spent several days getting the cave floor to look right. The floor was originally an
isosurface, but that was taking too long to render (9 hrs at 640*480 for the floor alone)
so I created a height field based on the isosurface (rendered the floor from above using
an orthographic camera and a planar pigment). The columns are isosurfaces, a surface or
revolution of a parabola with lots of noise added. The sandstone texture used on the walls
and columns is a function pigment created by Samuel Benge.

The stones and coins are places using a scatter macro written by Jonathan Rafael Ghiglia.
The stones are isosurfaces and the coins are heightfields. The bones are from a mesh found at
3d cafe

I looked for a free dragon mesh on the internet, but couldn't find one. The dragon is a poser
model by PhilC bought at www.renderosity.com. 

The person is a poser model, as are the clothes. 

Many thanks to the people on the POV-Ray news groups for all the helpful comments and advice.

I've included only the pov code in the zip file as the meshes and images are mostly too big.
If anyone would like the rest of the scene code, please contact me.