TITLE: Beyond Horizon
NAME: Toni Bratincevic
COUNTRY: Croatia
EMAIL: tbrat@mail.geocities.com
WEBPAGE: http://members.xoom.com/Intercepto
TOPIC: Imaginary Worlds
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: tbimagin.jpg
ZIPFILE: tbimagin.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POVRay 3.1

TOOLS USED: 

             - sPatch for modeling those creatures
             - POVRay 3.1 editor for writing some textures connecting exported
.pov files
             - Moray 3.1 for modeling complete scene and creating some textures

             - PhotoShop for creating some maps used for Height Fields, and
converting to JPG format 

RENDER TIME: 
    8h 25min

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 133 64 Mb


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

When I first saw the new theme on IRTC I say this is very large theme... you can
create all that you want and will be conected with theme. After all, all traces
that we do is in some way Imaginary Worlds. I have few ideas on my mind... one
of them was to reconstruct one unfinished project I started creating long time
ago and abadonned that because of lack od inspiration. Then idea come to me to
create world with liquid creatures... in the past I try to create that kind of
scene in 3DS 4.0, but since it not have raytracing, the result was not as I
expected. That was also abadoned... but the bird I started creating for that
picture was mostly finished, so I decided to make new space for her to live and
fly. :-) Maybe he could be a air guardian for some kind of magical temple. Hey,
I could also create some small funny creatures which will be Guardians for
ground forces. Maybe I could use some nice colors and try to make picture that
looks refreshing and funny. Well, that was the way I get an idea for this
picture.
If you closely look at the Fermik (guardian) in the left, try to guess what's he
doing. Look also  on yhe floor where he stand. :-) Hmmm ... yes, maybe It will
be beter that he pi in the lake, but HEY, then you will see something you must
not see. :-) Yes, these creatures I created are totaly crazy... but there is
always the serious bird... ;-)


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

As you can se, picture is very complex. Over 4000 objects are used to create all
models in the scene. After I get an idea for this IRTC, first element I started
creating was that metallic bird. At first, I decided to create it in Rhinoceros
(Demo) modeler, since he has some great techniques for modelling. But, after a
wile, I changed my mind, loaded my favorite modeler for POVRay, and start
building the bird with only primitive objects used with CSG. Now when I
finished this project, I'm so well trained in CSG, that I could probably built
everything I want.  Let's get back to bird and how I created her. First thing I
create was head. Head was builtet from two sphereres which are slightly moved
in opposite directions and intersected, so that as it aproach top it get's
sharper. After, with some cylinders and sphere I made some cuts in head (with
difference). For bird's neck I used torus and cones. Body is created with same
technique as head, and wings are mostly created from cones and box objects
differenced from some cylinders.
Model of this temple was also created with primitive objects. It's is not hard
to create this kind of model, but It takes too much time, and my computer is
not strong enought to do with that. Because of that, I separated this object in
4-5 files and I worked on separately on every one.
Creatures (Guardians I named fermik's :-) ) are created in sPatch. There are
quite siply, made mostly from extruded spherical shape. For eye I created one
sphere in separeted layer where I positioned him in right place... and lately
when I imported that in modeler sphere was created, scaled and positioned in
same place as that one created in sPatch ... then I erased one created in
sPatch. For the eye texture I used onion pattern. It can be also done with
gradient, but when you use onion pattern, you must scale it iz y direction
(moray coord. s.). Because of scaling, you get green shape for texture
positioning on your screen and by rotating them you can easly point eye
whereever you like. Hat and fermik's stick are also done with CSG. Sphere in
the middle of those two toruses in top of stick have transparent texture with
media inside, with slightly emission.
Grass are done with bezier patches in Moray. Few different bezier patches are
created and then multiplied with some random rotations and translations.
Flowers ar done with CSG. This two objects probably need some more work.
Door are ono of complex part's in the scene. The net was created with cylinders
and spheres, multiplied to create net, then rotated 45 degrees and intersected
with door shape. This part could be done probably with textures and bump maps.
Planet on the sky are primitive sphere :). For texturing it I used radial
pattern with triangle_wave, and pigment maps. I gave some ambient light to it.
Sky are created from one sky sphere and one box filled with media with wrinkles
pattern used as colour map. That give some nice clouds, but you can't see it
because they are beyond that structure.

Textures... all textures on the scene are coded in POVRay editor. For some of
them I used Moray texture editor, but I like the most to write textures in
POVRay. Stone on the floor and that building consist of few layers. It consist
of four layers with wrinkes, bumps, crackle and granite patterns.  To create
wood on the door I used two layers with wood and wrinkles pattern.
Metals and glass are easy to create since they dont use complex pigment maps.
For glass on the windows I used scaled wrinkles pattern with two colors to fake
reflection.
Height field is also included in zip file but is compressed with JPG. If you 
want to use it convert it in TGA format. 
 
This is one of the most favorite pictures I created. It took me about one month
to made her.

P.S.
I named most declarations and files in code with Croatian language. If you have
any question write me on email. 

Tnx. 

Bye.