EMAIL: keayers@columbus.rr.com NAME: Ken Ayers TOPIC: Surrealism COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Door To Someplace COUNTRY: USA WEBPAGE: http://home.columbus.rr.com/keayers/index.html RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.1g TOOLS USED:Corel PhotoPaint (Conversion to JPEG) RENDER TIME: 791 seconds HARDWARE USED: HP Pavilion, 1.0 GHz AMD Athlon, 256Mb RAM IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The notion of a door that leads to a place that isn't "here" is a recurring theme in many forms of art ... from science fiction to surrealistic paintings. This is my interpretation of that theme. I had had this idea kicking around in my head for quite some time. This month's topic finally gave me the "kick in rear" I needed to follow through with it. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: There were a number of challenges associated with fitting a boundless landscape into a "room" on the other side of the door. The "DoorExposed.jpg" file, within the accompanying ZIP file, exposes some of the movie-set-like magic that poses entirely for the benefit of the camera. As a software developer, I find that I apply many of the same techniques to producing POV-Ray images as I do to producing the software I write by day. Consequently, since I naturally think "modular", I end up with lots of files, each one typically devoted to one particular piece of the scene. I also tend to use a lot of variables and treat my scene description, in many ways, as if it were a "regular" program. For example, the main scene file ("Door.pov") contains a block of code that slices the "clock" value into pieces, in which individual digits control some aspect of the way the scene is rendered. In fact, by rendering with the clock option: +K101010 enables the "test camera" setup used to produce the "DoorExposed" image. Along these lines, I've also developed a technique for managing the render clock, to provide a scene-oriented approach to animations. If you're interested, check out the POV-Ray Animation Tutorial on my website: http://home.columbus.rr.com/keayers/index.html