EMAIL: mcv001@gmail.com NAME: M. R. Seavey TOPIC: Catastrophe COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Splat COUNTRY: USA WEBPAGE: RENDERER USED: Povray 3.6 TOOLS USED: none RENDER TIME: 2 hours 31 minutes HARDWARE USED: Pentium4-2.5Ghz IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Poor little ant . . . I have spent short passing periods playing with PovRay in the past, and, while still a rank beginner, have recently had the chance to spend more time with the program and it's excellent help and on-line support resource. I found myself with an image with a CSG tandem bike in a shed which finally, well prehaps only in my opinion, was good enough to submit to the IRTC. Then I read both the rules and the topic for April 2005. My image did not qualify. Then I read " . . . of course re-use good ideas and even objects from past image that you have created. " Now all I had to do was come up with a catastrophe idea. I had been adding detail to the "tandem shed" Pov scene file, helmets, water bottles, nails in the wall, a calendar from http://www.wikipov.org/ow.asp?MakeCalendar. I noticed how my "3 scaled spheres" bicycle floor pump handle looked a bit like an ant's body, so in my notes for scene additions, I added "ants". DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Now at first the ants where all black. I thought the ant-splat should have a little bit of "bug juice" color. Red was used mostly because it fits the rest of the scene, I did not go out andsteps on ants to see what is really correct. In coloring the squished ant red, I came to like the effect on the healther ants, so they are not just black in the submited image. Layer textures and pigments are our friends! The ant, ant_splat, wall, 48 spoke bike wheel, and floor pump are all original include files. The bike wheel was inspired by one in "Hotenuf" by Kerwin D Kanago, IRTC JULY-August 1996. We are too close to the wall to show it in this scene, but multiple wall studs look much more realistic when one translates the applied textures a random amount on each. Most things in the real world are not identical. The ants ( accept for Mr. Squished ) in this scene are identical, but they are placed uneven and camera perspective also makes them look at least a bit varied. I never could tell one from another. Render time might have been lower if radiosity was not used and freecell not played while occasionally peeking at progress. Irafview was used to adjust gamma and brightness, and to convert the submitted image to a jpeg under 250KB. IRTC size rules make it tough on any image with wood and concrete textures, as they don't seem to compress well in jpg files, had to compress down to 85% quality. I am sorry for the one ant, but I do hope most of the catastrophes we face are small and that we look for the humor in them if at all possible. M. R. Seavey, April 2005