TITLE: Glass Dice
NAME: Robert "Draugnar" Bolin
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: draugnar@iglou.com
WEBPAGE: (under construction)
TOPIC: glass
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: glasdice.jpg
ZIPFILE: glasdice.zip
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.01 for Windows 95, Pentium Optimized
TOOLS USED: Notepad <g>, Paint Shop Pro for JPG conversion and signature.
RENDER TIME: 3 days 14 hours 29 minutes.
HARDWARE USED: Gateway P5-90 w/ 16 Meg RAM, 1.2 Gig master, 600 Meg slave.
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
I had already started this image to test and modify some of the
standard glass properties into more refractive, brighter glass forms
for another design when I saw what this months competition was.

I decided to take it a step further and add several different shapes
familiar from my youth as "dragon dice" for dungeons and dragons (and
other RPGs) and then realized it would be sharp to indent letters into
the sides.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 
The shapes are all standard shapes except one.  The Decahedron is an
"original" shape created by combining the Y-axis rotation of the
Dodecahedron with the X-axis rotations of the Octahedron.  I was unhappy
the cube as a cube, so I used a superellipsoid to round off the edges
a little.

The numbers and the dots are, obviously, differences.  The numbers are
from the chars.inc file and the dots on the standard six-sided dice
were created using spheres.

The glass, itself, is an original creation with some very nice
refractive properties.

The scene uses 10 different light sources.  The first is a general
light source which allows you to see the floor.  The second through
fifth are 4 spotlights placed so they shine through the four corner
dice and onto the Icosahedron in the center.  The remaining five
are basic light sources in white placed inside each dice.  The
Icosahedron's is yellow and not white, combining with the other dices'
refracted lights to create an eerie glow.

The floor is a HUGE sphere as I like to simulate a real world with a
slight curvature to the horizon and not just a plane.



