TITLE: Ancient Papyrus Fragment Under Magnifying Glass
NAME: Bob Sewell
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: bob.sewell@viponline.com
WEBPAGE: http://network3000.com/bob/JPGFILE: bs-frag.jpg

TOPIC: Glass
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: bs-frag.jpg
ZIPFILE: bs-frag.zip
RENDERER USED: POVRay 3.00e for Windows
TOOLS USED: 

Moray 2.02.wat, MS Paint 95, MS Image Composer, LViewPro,
Photoshop 2.5 LE


RENDER TIME: 23 hours, 59 minutes, 15 seconds
HARDWARE USED: Pentium 133MHz with 64MB RAM, 256K Cache
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


An ancient papyrus with Greek lettering is under study in the wee hours of the
morning.  A glass of red wine provides the only cheer for the scholar in his
dim room, lit by a candle and oil lamp which fill the air with a light cloud
of smoke.

An artist is never satisfied with his/her work.  As the final render takes
place on the deadline date of Feb 28, I see things that need improvement.  The
fragment is not lit very well, and parts of the wine glass and lamp are dark,
which indicate a need to increase the max_trace_depth global setting.  But,
since this took almost exactly 24 hours to render, I don't have time to re-do
it.  May the judges be merciful!



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


I used Moray to model the lamp, candle and holder, wine glass and the
magnifying glass.  The glass bodies of the lamp and wine glass were modeled in
separate sections so that I could use a smaller copy of the main body of
each--with a colored glass texture--to simulate the amber oil and ruby-colored
wine.

The table, chair and cabinet were Moray model files which either came with
Moray or I downloaded from somewhere on the internet, and the author(s) are
unknown.  If you recognize them as your own, even though I changed the color
and otherwise modified them, I thank you, and wish you would tell me who you
are--I'd like to swap some of my .MDL files with you!

The wallpaper pattern was drawn in MS Paint 95 and converted to GIF format by
LViewPro.  The papyrus fragment was also created in MS Paint 95.  A wrinkle
texture was added using MS Image Composer, then MS Paint 95 was again used to
erase the edges in a ragged fashion.  LViewPro was then used to convert it to
GIF and mark the background as transparent.  I am not satisfied with the way
POVray handles the transparency of a GIF image, since it left that portion
black rather than transparent.  I hope the viewer will interpret this as if
the fragment was mounted on a sheet for preservation purposes.

The flames are modified versions of the flame used in Dan Farmer's MATCHES.POV
file which came with POVray.  I decreased the number of lights and decreased
their falloff rate to dim their effect.

Finally, I added a type 1 atmosphere with very large distance and very small
scattering values.  I just wanted enough to make the flames show up without
fogging up the scene too much.  Also, too much atmosphere tended to wash out
the cabinet behind the lamp, which looked horrible.  I wonder if it is
possible to localize an atmosphere to within a small are?  If so, I'd have put
it only inside the chimneys to make the flames visible and left it out of the
rest of the room.  Adding atmosphere increased render time by 600

Photoshop 2.5 LE was used for adding the title, name and copyright, as well as
converting the final image to JPEG format.

Most textures were from the standard include files from the POVray 3.00e
package.  Any others are included in the zip file for this image.  The only
file not included was the actual 2MB .INC file used for the wall candle's
chimney, but I do include my smaller test .INC file that I used while
proof-rendering, 'cause it loads and renders faster.

I am a recent convert to POVRay for Windows (having worked with Polyray for
three years) and I must say the power and flexibility of POVRay is superior to
Polyray, although I admit the fault may be my own--it may have been due to my
inability to unleash Polyray's power.  Either way, for me POVRay for Windows
makes raytracing much easier while giving the image results I've been yearning
for.

Oh, and one more thing:  To Mssrs. Lutz & Kretzschmer, I like Moray a lot, but
in the next version can you 1) allow the user to define the Y-axis as up
instead of Z?  I have a hard time thinking in that orientation.  And 2) tell
me how to get it to put the objects at the origin when exporting to POVRay
instead of 'way down at -39 or something?  Let me move the object away from
the origin instead of having to search for wherever Moray put it.  I'm
probably just doing something wrong, but...



