TITLE: The Sarcophagus
NAME: Simon de Vet
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: sdevet@istar.ca
WEBPAGE: http://home.istar.ca/~sdevet
TOPIC: Ruins
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: chernoby.jpg
ZIPFILE: chernoby.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray MegaPOV 0.4

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray, Rhino

RENDER TIME: 
    ~45 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 266

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

A symbol of the most important ruin of recent memory. The Chernobyl Unit 4
Reactor lies encased in a concrete Sarcophagus, over 10 years after the
disaster.

Like another memorable ruin, this one holds a curse.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

I decided on this image fairly soon after the topic was announced. I wanted to
avoid the cliches of egyptian tombs and greek temples and portray something a
little closer to home, a little more contemporary. The Chernobyl reactor seemed
to be the perfect choice - a ruin, still dangerous, and still important. Even
though it's encases in reinforced concrete, it doesn't go away.

The cooling tower was created first, soon after the topic was announced. It sat
on my hard drive, gathering digital dust for most of the round. Exams and
assignments took much of my time, and I abandoned the image entirely. Then, on
February 28th, 1 day before the image was due, I started working again. In a
mad rush of modelling, texturing, and composition the image took form. On
February 29th final improvements were made, and the image was finished just in
time.

This is my first return to primitives since I bought a copy of Rhino in the
summer. All objects were laid out by hand, based on a number of images I found
at http://insp.pnl.gov:2080/?chorninit/chorninit . The scale is uncertain, as
all dimensions had to be judged by eye. All texturing is procedural, and my
proudest achievement of the image. No image maps were hurt in the creation of
this image.

It should be noted that the actual Unit 4 is not this dirty. It's actually a
rather cheerful blue. I took some artistic liberties in enhancing the ruin.

I am glad to finally return to the IRTC, and look forward to voting again, if
exams and assignments don't get to me first :)

The final image was rendered in MegaPOV 0.4, using area lights and radiosity. By
removing the radiosity (not a major difference, really), it should be
renderable in standard POV.

The .zip file contains the .pov and .inc files necessary to render the image,
and the .mdl for Moray users. It also contains a few images of the cooling
tower, which is more detailed than the final image indicates.



Thanks go to:

  "Chornobyl Initiatives (http://insp.pnl.gov:2080/?chorninit/chorninit)" - An
amazingly thorough site, which served as my primary reference.

  "Chernobyl : insight from the inside, Chernousenko, V. M." - An interesting
book, with great images of the cooling tower

  Margus Ramst - who aided me with cryllic translations (which didn't make it to
the final image) and for pointing me in the direction of the website above.

  povray.binaries.images - Who gave some last minute comments on my image.

  Robert Mickelsen - who created the (modified) seabirds I have flying high in
the sky

  Kibo - I'm allowed.


