EMAIL: ninja114@spl.at NAME: Tyler Eaves TOPIC: Architecture COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Beacon COUNTRY: USA RENDERER USED: Pov-Ray 3.5c TOOLS USED: Gimp, Python RENDER TIME: 27 hours, 31 minutes HARDWARE USED: AMD Athlon, 950Mhz with 512MB SDRAM IMAGE DESCRIPTION: See the next section for info on the image. One thing I do want to say here. I've included a full res (1500x2250) JPG in the zip file. The quality is much better than the 250k image. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Well, here it is, my second IRTC entry. My focus on this image was more on creating an interesting image, rather than creating something super-photorealistic or some masterpeice of modeling. The image marks my first exploration into the world of media, and I've really pleased with how it's come out. When the topic was first announced, I felt sort of non-commital, toyed around with a few ideas, but nothing really gripped me. I was almost going to pass on this round, when I thought of doing a lighthouse. I've always lived in Eastern North Carolina, home to perhaps the greatest collection of classic lighthouses in the world, with at least a half dozen still standing, including the houses at Ocrakoke, Currituck, Cape Hatteras, Bodie Island, and Bald Head Island. This lighthouse was not based on any particular one, but more a general mish-mash. I started work on this image knowing that I wanted to model the individual bricks in the lighthouse itself. I instantly realised that there is nothing that required me to place them all 'in place'. I thought that a heavily damaged lighthouse would look very neat, and I think that was a wise choice. The code to generate them was written so taht I could easily vary the parameters. It was originally written in SDL, but that proved to be too slow, and wasteful, as there is really no need to regenerate all 45,000 or so bricks every render. I rewrote the code in python. Run it like so: 'python makebricks.py' and it will generate the bricks.pov file. I did't include bricks.pov in the zip file, as even zipped it's over 2 megs. (Almost 14 uncompressed!) The algorithmn that builds the bricks has two components. It keeps two angle variables that define where the main 'missing bit'. Any bricks within that range are automatically removed, and a small fraction of the remaining bricks are also removed. The bricks themselves are boxes. The top bit of the lighthouse is very simple, just a cone, some cylindres, and some glass. Next thing I added to the scene was the radio beacon, that's generated algorithmically in modern.pov. Again, all parameters (mostly) are in the file, so feel free to use it in your own work. The next thing I added to the scene was the information plaque. I think it came out quite nicely, for something so simple. It's a heightfield (made with the Gimp) and a Rounded_Box. At this point, I had a good basic scene, but I wasn't quite happy with it. I was starting to come together, but it wasn't....art. That's when I decided to make it a night shot. A few hours of editing later, some nice media, and abour 40 (!) spotlights later, we have the image. Well, not quite. I *ALMOST* had an image. It needed a sky. The moon is a sphere with two textures, one small to give it 'bumps' the other large and paartly transparent for coloration. The stars are NOT a texture. I wrote another python program (stars.py) to generate stars.pov. It generates 18,000 spheres. Well, there you have it. Feel free to use anything here in your own scenes, andI hope you like the image!