TITLE: Fire Flake NAME: Michael Chelmecki COUNTRY: United States EMAIL: zerozerozerozero@wyan.org WEBPAGE: Private TOPIC: FIRE AND ICE COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: fireflak.jpg ZIPFILE: fireflak.zip RENDERER USED: POVray 3.6 TOOLS USED: IrfanView - convert to JPEG, gamma correct RENDER TIME: 47 min, 23 sec HARDWARE USED: AMD K6 IMAGE DESCRIPTION: I'm afraid there's no deep symbolism this time, just an attempt to combine the topic elements into what I hope is an aesthetically pleasing image. After trying out several different variations with respect to backgrounds and arrangements of large and small numbers of different "fireflakes", I came to a firm conclusion that, in the case of this particular image, less really was more. All of the non-black backgrounds made the image seem far less dramatic. Large numbers of "flakes" made the image seem busy and cluttered. Just a handful seemed to beg the question, "Where are the rest?" In the end, I just decided that a tight close-up of my favorite design brought the basic idea home with the most elegance and intensity. In order to keep the black background that I grew attached to, yet avoid having the main element exist in a visual environment totally devoid of depth or context, I added a rippled surface below that is visible only inasmuch as it reflects the "fireflake". The ripples emanate from the point at which the "flake" touches the surface so that the interaction will make the deliberately sparse elements both seem more substantial. Although I did take some time to study real snowflakes and the principles that govern their formation, in the end I kept the characteristics that I found visually pleasing and disregarded the rest. I experimented with deliberately imperfect symmetry for added realism, but decided that I simply didn_t care for the result. "Realistic" fire has very little surface definition and, thus, seemed inadequate for the purpose of modeling a surface that conveyed the intrinsic beauty of the snowflake. Instead, I tried to represent the idea of fire in a more impressionistic manner using color, pattern and form, taking inspiration from some of my favorite painters, particularly Hieronymus Bosch and William Blake. I hope that in combining the aspects of fire and ice that I find most visually pleasing into a single construct, I have created image that others will enjoy as well. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: The "flake" itself is a collection of icosahedrons stretched, flattened, flipped, clipped and rotated. The surface below is a height field function based on the sine of the distance from <.5,.5>. The fire pattern is a "leopard" pattern with the turbulence, omega and lambda values tweaked to produce the desired result.