EMAIL: gromit@ix.netcom.com NAME: M Daugherty TOPIC: Out of Place COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Easter Finest RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.6 TOOLS USED: Mesh modeling: Anim8or 3d, Art of Illusion, Wings 3d. Image conversion: Paintshop Pro RENDER TIME: 36m 2s HARDWARE USED: Pentium 4M 2.4 GHz IMAGE DESCRIPTION: For centuries, the enigmatic moai (statues) of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) have stood in silent rows, gazes turned to the distant horizon. They bear the unending cycles of harsh wind and sun with grim, impassive determination – all that is, save one... DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: With apologies to the amazing craftsmen of Rapa Nui who created these wonderful relics! The moai are fairly simple mesh objects with a layered texture. I created these in a combination of Anim8or, Art of Illusion and Wings 3d (I was getting my feet wet at 3d modeling and was trying out various programs). For references, I used some photos of the moai that I found on the web. The sunglasses are another mesh object – based loosely on a “Blues Brothers” style. Aside from the obvious, the 3rd moai is slightly out of position in the row – as suits him! The hillside is an isosurface – although given the covering of vegetation, a simpler primitive probably would have worked as well. The grass is a collection of mesh objects, placed using the Trace macro. There are 3 basic grass blades, which are multiplied for 10 different textures. I used a pigment function (bozo) to generate a look up function for assigning textures based on the X-Z coordinates. The look up table has a little “turbulence” in the entries so that the colors are scattered a little. The pigment function also adjusts the height, so that some patches are taller (and greener) than others. I kept trying to adjust the pigments of the grass, until I finally just put them in a separate light group. The parse time for all the grass and textures is the biggest piece of the total render time. There are probably much better ways to do this. The sea is a basic plane, with a little bit of fog to blend the color to the horizon. The sky is a simple sky sphere with a two color gradient. I would have liked to do a more sophisticated set of clouds but settled for using a stock texture (T_Clouds1) from skies.inc over a plane. I’m a newbie to the IRTC and would like to thank all those talented folks who have made their tips, tricks, and source code available.