TITLE: allegory
NAME: Norbert Kern
COUNTRY: Germany
EMAIL: norbert-werner.kern@t-online.de
WEBPAGE: not yet
TOPIC: Dreaming
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: allegory.jpg
ZIPFILE: allegory.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Pov-Ray v3.5 RC6

TOOLS USED: 
    Terragen, Forester+Arboretum, Clothray, Xfrog, 3DWin, OBJuvPOV,
Photoshop

RENDER TIME: 

1. terragen render
2. main render: everything visible to save radiosity data
3. main render: alpha channel on; sky and ground noimage
        parse 3 min 7 sec + ca. 36 h additional parsing time 
         for tracing grass and cloth generation
         trace 24 h (2048*1152 AA 0.2)   peak memory 870 MB
4. ground only
        trace 5 min   peak memory 11.4 MB
5. ground with objects noimage
        parse 3 min 7 sec / trace 31 min   peak memory 650 MB
6. mask: all objects white / sky and ground black
        parse 3 min 48 sec / trace 8 min 23 sec   
        peak memory 707 MB
7. combining all
        parse 13 min / trace 18 sec (1024*576; no AA)   
        peak memory 663 MB


HARDWARE USED: 
    1.4 GHz Athlon C / 1 GB RAM



IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


While dreaming our subconsciousness bridges the divide to the 
consciousness. At least I see the things in this way. 
My allegoric image shows a dream as a foulard, wafting over a 
chasm. 
Two large trees represent the areas they are standing on. The oak 
with its big base is a symbol for the vast areas of the 
subconscious mind. Similarly a tall poplar on a narrow headland 
represents the superior functions of our conscious mind and its 
presumably small proportion of the whole brain.
The head made of pipes as dream origin represents the somewhat 
"mechanic" maintenance function of them. I chose a foulard as 
symbol because it shows the same volatile and erratic behaviour 
like the most of my dreams. The illumination represents the
 favourite daytime for dreams you can remind of later and the 
season the somewhat morbid character of them ...



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


Like many others I like the amazing skies and landscapes which 
can be made with Terragen easily 
(http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/). 
There are between 30 and 40 IRTC entries, which use Terragen in 
various ways. Mostly a Terragen render was used as a background
(even two winners used this technique). Other ways include use of 
terrain creation or Terragen output as an entry.
Another way is the integration of  Terragen output in another 3d 
software like Blender, Lightwave and others. Integration in Pov-Ray 
can be acchieved with Forester (http://www.dartnall.f9.co.uk/).
Because such a integration involves 2D programs in the final step,
I wanted to test an own method 
(http://www.dartnall.f9.co.uk/forester/manual/tutorial3.htm).

First a pleasant Terragen render was made (not very difficult).
The camera settings and the terrain were converted into Pov formate
by Forester.

Trees are modeled with Arboretum, which is a add-on to Forester.
They are similar to the sample trees they are based on 
(http://www.dartnall.f9.co.uk/forester/arboretum.htm).
Leaf and bark textures were changed.
The head was created with a modified version of Gilles Tran_s
Madpipe macro 
(http://www.oyonale.com/ressources/english/sources08.htm).
The unoptimized modification uses trace, the head object itself is
from http://www.softy3d.com/en/gallery.htm.
The foulard mesh file is generated by POVMan 0.71.4 and exported
to Pov-Ray 3.5 (http://tofbouf.free.fr/). Texture is image_pattern 
based with transparent parts.
Grass is based on grassblade code from Alan Holding
(http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.scene-files/14853/).
Flower is a Xfrog model (http://www.xfrogdownloads.com/
greenWeb2/Templates/start.html).
Vegetation is planted with my own method described earlier
(http://www.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/2002-02-28/meadow.txt).

I rendered the whole scene to gather radiosity data.
Then I rendered the scene with alpha channel and without land 
and sky. Radiosity data had to be loaded.
To get shadows from the objects on the terrain, a render of the 
pure terrain with plain white texture and another render with added
objects was made (no_image command on all objects).
Another render was taken with all objects in pure white and sky / 
land in black. This render is needed as mask for the objects.
The 5 images were rendered in 2048*1152 pixels to get better 
antialiasing results.
All images were combined in the last render. Eventually a small 
random component was added to each color component 
independently (twice as much for blue).
The antialiasing method was described in my last entry
(http://www.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/2002-04-30/frosted.txt).

The zip file does not contain the meshes because of their size and
the imagemaps are scaled down for the same reason.
If anybody wants it, feel free to contact me.