TITLE: Birth of Myth
NAME: Jim Charter
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: jrcsurvey@msn.com
WEBPAGE: http \\www21.brinkster.com\jrcsurvey\
TOPIC: Mythology
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: birth.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.5

TOOLS USED: 
    wings3D, Uvmapper, PoseRay, lighting.inc

RENDER TIME: 
    2h 33m

HARDWARE USED: 
    Athlon 2000

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

This scene does not illustrate any particular myth.  Rather it alludes to
commonalities that are generally true with myths.  The sense of inhabiting the
world with animals and spirits that take the form of animals.  Feral versus
civilized existence.  The specialized qualities of different creatures. 
Explanation of the nature and source of phenomena.  Visitations and the
cultivation of relations with gods, spirits. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The ground is a height field generated from a ridged multifractal function.  The
sky and lighting make use of the lighting files by Jaime and Ive.  Both figures
are modelled with Wings 3D.  The fur generation was done in POV. The fur tufts
are clipped spheres. The direction of the flow of the fur was described with
splines running along the surface of the model. The figure of the boy is only
briefly modelled in a few hours. All the time was spent on the wolf.  I was
still revising the technique for applying fur on the final day of the entry
period.  This picture represents a lot of experimentation.  One thing that is
for me emblematic about this entry was a crutch I divised.  I created a file
called "stuff".  Whenever I needed to sacrifice some chunk of code I would save
it in the "stuff" file.  This allowed me a less precious attitude to any
particular piece of code.  Only the clothing uses image_maps briefly derived
from the template produced from uvmapper. Extensive use was made of Wings
ability to assign materials to polygons.  This was used to identify places on
the model's surface for either the application of color to the fur or to
establish the length and direction of the fur.