TITLE: Fortress
NAME: Bill Pragnell
COUNTRY: UK
EMAIL: wmp506@bham.ac.uk
WEBPAGE: None at present
TOPIC: Imaginary Worlds
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: fortress.jpg
ZIPFILE: fortress.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POVray 3.0

TOOLS USED: 
    No others

RENDER TIME: 
    up to 10 hours development, approx. 45mins render time.

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 266, 32MB RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    A futuristic stronghold in an otherworldly setting,
surrounded by an
oversized maze. Simple, eh.

IMAGE CREATION DESCRIPTION: This is an image I have had in mind for some time,
this round
providing an adequate excuse to realise it. I started with a simple sketch of
what I had
in mind, and built the image up by hand. I was quite surprised by how little the
final
image differed from my original sketch; usually the mind's eye is quite heavy on
peripheral
vision which is difficult to get across using a raytracer.

There is nothing particularly sneaky here; the maze I sketched separately and
hand-coded
in cubes with a trusty calculator. It is not as big as it looks; the camera
angle is about
as high as I could manage without losing the sense of scale. The fort is simple
CSG with
eight layers of texturing (although to be fair six of them are the image-maps
for the
windows etc). The image maps were created on my loyal Acorn Archimedes and
converted to
GIF files with whatever shareware I had lying around. I actually included
battlements, but
in the end they aren't visible from that distance. The fog, etc is all basics
(tip - make
your sky horizon the same colour as the fog for extra depth). I was going for
high-level
cloud but it looked too normal so I thought some lower, mistier cover would
further help
with the impression of size. It did.

The one part I am quite proud of are the planets in the sky - I am constantly
admiring
other people's planets whilst wondering how to do 'em myself. The sky isn't a
sky sphere,
but actually a normal, transparent sphere with the planets outside (of course
objects
can't be placed outside the in-built sky sphere). This is basically how the moon
gets
its blue-tinted shadow in real life. The obelisks and bridges were all
afterthoughts,
although I think I spent rather too long on detailing the bridges.

I usually like to keep my images fairly simple - for a start, as an
undergraduate student
I don't have a great deal of time on my hands, or my hands on a great deal of
flashy
hardware. This round's topic I think is the best kind, with plenty of scope for
surreal
and otherworldly fantasy. My view is that if you can go out and take a photo of
it, it
ain't worth raytracing.

