TITLE: Beacon
NAME: Tyler Eaves
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: ninja114@spl.at
TOPIC: Architecture
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: tebeacon.jpg
ZIPFILE: tebeacon.zip
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!