EMAIL: StephenF@whoever.com
NAME: Stephen M. Farrell
TOPIC: Mystery
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: A Study In Scarlet 
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: N/A
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray for Windows 3.5
TOOLS USED: POV-Ray for Windows 3.5; Paint Shop Pro 7 (for signature and jpg conversion)
RENDER TIME: 30 hours 45 minutes
HARDWARE USED: Pentium 4 2.53 GHz; 1 GB RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

  I tried to create a scene which works on two levels - first, for the casual observer, something which is instantly recognizable as a scene from a typical mystery novel.  But, for the more astute observer, I included nods to several well-known (in most cases) mystery novels/plays/etc (I count nine intentional homages (including the title reference), although a few may not be as recognizable as I would have liked.) A list of these references appears at the end of this file.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

  Finally, after three and a half years, I managed to create a scene which comes close to matching what I could see in my mind's eye.  It's about time!

  Just a few notes about how some of the objects were created.

  The body, once again, is a blob object.  My intention was to get something that at least looks decent without spending forever on it, and I think I succeeded pretty well here.  (Of course, not showing the face, hands, or feet helps a lot.)  The blood on the floor, the seat and back of the chair, and the statuette (which doesn't look good at all) on the desk are all blobs as well.

  The curtain is an isosurface which uses a pigment function - not perfect, but I think it looks pretty good.  The floorlamp is a lathe, as are the light bulbs.  The vase is also a simple lathe, as are the legs of the coffee table.

  The mirror frame uses sphere_sweeps, and I think I got it to look pretty good pretty quickly.  The glass of the mirror, however, seemed to cause no end of problems.  For some reason using a reflection value of 1 didn't look quite right to me, even after adjusting all the other finish values as much as I could.  I finally decided to try a value of 2 for reflection, which seemed to give me the look I was going for, but it was way too bright.  I tried adjusting the other values to compensate, but that didn't seem to help.  Finally I noticed that lowering the pigment value of the glass object helped to dim it, but even a value of rgb <0, 0, 0> wasn't enough.  I ended up using rgb <-4, -4, -4>, which seems very odd to me, but I think it works.

  I used my standard radiosity settings here, which worked well up until the final render, when some annoying bright spots appeared on the books.  Although running out of time, I made some adjustments, which helped the bright spots but also created a few dark blotches elsewhere (most noticable on the vase, and some on the window struts).  Hopefully it doesn't look too bad, though. And hopefully it didn't turn out too dark... my intention was to create a room that's heavily shadowed in spots, and it looks good on my monitor.  If I got it right, you should be able to just make out the individual books on the shelf, although they should be fairly dark.   

  The rest of the scene is pretty much csg.  By the way, the painting in the outer room is Mondrian's Composition A: Composition wth Black, Red, Gray, Yellow and Blue.  The jack-o-lantern painting reflected in the mirror is a POV-Ray scene I created a while back just for fun.

  I really enjoyed creating this one, and am pretty happy with how it turned out... hope others enjoy it as well.  All comments/criticism greatly appreciated.

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List of References to Novels/Plays/etc:  

A Study In Scarlet - A. Conan Doyle (overall)
The Mousetrap - Agatha Christie (under coffee table)
Black Coffee - Agatha Christie (on coffee table)
Cards On The Table - Agatha Christie (on coffee table)
The ABC Murders - Agatha Christie (alphabet blocks on mantel)
The Mirror Crack'd (From Side to Side) - Agatha Christie (mirror)
Hallowe'en Party - Agatha Christie (reflection in mirror)
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett (statuette on desk)
The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian - Lawrence Block (painting in outer room)