EMAIL: StephenF@whoever.com
NAME: Stephen M. Farrell
TOPIC: Fantasy/Mystic
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: The Mage's Room
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: n/a
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray for Windows 3.1
TOOLS USED: POV-Ray for Windows 3.1; Paint Shop Pro 6.02 (for jpg conversion, signature, and brightness adjustment).
RENDER TIME: Approx. 10 1/2 hrs.
HARDWARE USED: Pentium II 266; 384 mb RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
  What would a fantasy novel be without a mage?  And what would a mage be without a dark, gloomy workroom in which to hone his craft?  Here, the hero of our story arrives at the mage's workroom, looking to acquire his services, only to find the mage missing in action....

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
  (Viewing Note:  This scene is intended to be rather dark... the books on the top shelf of the tallest bookcase should be just discernable.  I'm not sure how it will look on different monitors under different lighting conditions (although I did a brightness adjustment in Paint Shop Pro to try to compensate, allowable under the rules (section 5, subsection f, subsection iii)).  Please feel free to adjust the gamma/brightness to suit your viewing conditions if necessary.)

  Nothing overly complicated here... I wanted to get back to basics this time around.  Mainly a mix of CSG and lathes (lots of lathes here... the goblet, hourglass, candlestick, flasks, and the posts of the book stand are all lathes.)  The bookcases took more work and time than anything else in the scene... although constructed from simple CSG, the placement of the books took quite a while.  I used while loops to place them, using a series of switch statements to dictate the position, and much use of random to determine the book color, height, and the size, color, and position of the title on the spine.

  The candle turned out well, I think.  The candlestick is a lathe, while the candle itself is made of blobs, with spherical components placed in a triangular configuration, which is then rotated upward in a spiral, and then four copies of that are rotated around the y axis to make the finished product.  The wick is a simple blob object, and the flame of course is simple media.

  Speaking of media... I need some way to light the middle ground of the scene, and tried to create some spheres of glowing, coalescing magical energy.  Unfortunately, I don't think they turned out very well.  I haven't had much experience with media, since I just don't have the patience to work with it on my current system.

  Let's see... the floor pattern is made of triangles, placed using while loops.  And the jar of eyeballs uses the looks_like property to make some of them glow, using randomness to determine which ones are lit.

  That's about it for this time around.  I had a lot of fun making this scene, and hope you enjoy it.  Comments/constructive criticism definitely appreciated!