EMAIL: rclee@oklahoma.net NAME: Robert Lee TOPIC: Spectacular Landscapes COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Beans COUNTRY: USA WEBPAGE: None RENDERER USED: POV 3.5 TOOLS USED: World Maker, IfranView, Little Gray Cells RENDER TIME: about 4 days HARDWARE USED: 500 Mhz Pentium on Windows 98, 1.7 Mhz Pentium on Win XP, and 2.4 Mhz Pentium on Win 2000. IMAGE DESCRIPTION: In a magic land, Jack climbed the beanstalk and discovered the giant's castle. Soon after the topic was announced I was inspired after watching "Mickey and the Beanstalk". This isn't exactly "Happy Valley" but I was also motivated by Lord of the Rings. I wanted to include mountains, rivers, trees, wide open spaces, an evening star and, of course, beautiful clouds. I was tempted to eliminate the beanstalk and castle, but decided that they added an extra element of fantasy to a picture that was becoming a fantastic landscape. Note that the source of the magic beans comes from the river in the foreground as bushes with similar leaves as the stalk grow near the water. Building on the fantasy element, I departed from realistic lighting to color the clouds with a sunset color and added extra strong moonlight to this early evening scene. In this mystical land everything glows with magic. This is the second scene I've created with POV and I am pleased with the results. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Terrain: I started with some mountains made with World Maker and placed them in the background. Since the sky was so dark and the light source was behind the mountains, I needed a special light to make the mountains brighter. I created a light group with a light source and the mountains to brighten them a bit. I wanted the "Misty Mountains" to be majestic in the far distance with the foreground dominated by an open space, a plane, covered with grass. Thanks to RUNE S. JOHANSEN, http://runevision.com/3d/include/include.asp, I could have some grass that did not take forever to render. River: The plane was covered with grass, but it was also specially prepared for the river. An array was defined to hold points along a sphere sweep, their radii, and an off set value that would be used to create the river bank. The river sphere sweep object with radi + the offset value was subtracted from the grass plane so that a second plane below, textured as a river bed of rocks, could be seen when the river was filled with water. Next a river bank was created by subtracting the river sphere sweep object from the sphere sweep object that had the offset values added, leaving the area defined by the offset radii textured as the river bank. The river bank sphere sweep object was then scaled to be very small in the Y direction so that it was flat against the grass plane. The river sphere sweep object, smaller than the river bank, was added back in, scaled to be thin in the Y direction, and filled with water material. In the end, the river had a bank, water, and the river bed could be seen through the water. Thanks to Christoph Hormann's water tutorial on the web, I was able to develop some acceptable looking water. Stalk: The bean stalk was generated using a primary sphere sweep object and then wrapping 3 more sphere sweep objects with randomized connection points around the primary. The stalk was textured and the leaves were added. The leaves are a surface of revolution to generate a 3D pod like shape. There are 330 leaves distributed up and down the stalk. Houses: These structures are simple CSG objects made up of boxes for the walls and chimney. A door and window are cut out of the walls, a wooden door is added. The roof, flat boxes rotated at an angle, is supported with a triangular prism object to fill in the space between the walls and the roof. The walls are textured with a crackle pattern to simulate stones. The roof consists of a thatch texture I found on the Internet. A light source was added to each house to suggest human occupation. Road: The road object is a sphere sweep object squashed by scaling the Y direction very small so that it lies flat against the grassy plane. Castle: The castle is a simple CSG object made up of boxes, a cylinder, disc, and a cone. The castle was given a high ambient value so that it would be very bright accentuating its magical quality. Foliage: There are 2 kinds of bushes. One that looks like grass made up of individual sphere sweep objects rotated randomly around X, Y, and Z, and translated in the Y direction. A second bush type is made up of the same leaves as are on the bean stalk. Bushes were placed around the houses and randomly placed in an area beyond the houses to show a change in foliage from field, to bushes, to hills and mountains in the distance. Trees: Thanks to TOM AUST, I was able to place 2 beautiful birch trees in the foreground using his Tom Tree code. Rocks and River Grass: Rocks were generated using superellipsoids and sinking them so they would be part in and part out of the water. The river grass is the same object used in the grass bushes. The rocks and grass were placed along and in the river using the river sphere sweep points. The objects had to be scaled with distance from the camera so that the farther objects could be seen more clearly. Evening Star: Thanks to CHRIS COLEFAX, I could place a story book evening star in the upper left. Clouds: Being a meteorologist, I wanted the clouds to look right. I started with a box and filled it with scattering and absorbing media. The light source was set low to the horizon and colored to get that great pinkish light. The media was given a density with a planar form, a little turbulence was added, and a color map was applied to achieve the results shown in the picture. The base of the box was too flat so I experimented with translucent spheres filled with media to create a variable cloud base. In the end I used a thin isosurface box, filled with media, perturbed with f_noise3d. Fog: Some fog was added to give a feeling of mystery and magic. Lighting: There is one point source light colored pink to light up the clouds positioned close to the far horizon. There is another light source behind the clouds that part of a light group with the mountains to make them a bit brighter. Media interaction and attenuation were turned on. There is another light source high above the clouds and toward the mountains to light the ground and make shadows on the ground. Program Structure: I have a main module that displays and places the main objects. I prefer this construction so that I can selectively display or not display various objects as the scene develops. The object details are defined in several include files. I've cleaned up the code of comments, but left the radiosity and suntype switch statements in. These were handy when trying out different lighting schemes without having to redo them every time I changed my mind. Radiosity: I used medium quality radiocity settings: pretrace_start 0.08 pretrace_end 0.01 count 120 error_bound 0.25 recursion_limit 1 brightness 3 media on normal on always_sample on If you have read this long explanation, congratulations for sticking with it. I continue to learn more and more with each effort. I hope I can pass on a little of what I have learned.