TITLE: Childish Knightmare
NAME: Phil Brewer
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: koden@mindspring.com
TOPIC: Dreaming
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: pb_kntmr.jpg
ZIPFILE: pb_kntmr.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    MegaPov 0.7

TOOLS USED: 
    Rhinocerous 3D, SpilinEditor 1.2, Pick'o'Color, sPatch

RENDER TIME: 
    About 88 hours

HARDWARE USED: 
    AMD T-bird 1GHz, P3 1GHz

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


In the middle of a moonlit night, a young boy's subconcious imagination
springs to life. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


This is my first IRTC entry. I've been meaning to for a long time now, and a
recent visit to the website to see the "Dreaming" topic put me into a
brainstorm.
This idea came to me as a twist on the theme, and I couldn't resist trying my
hand at 
it. This is also my first real test with radiosity. I'm pleased with the
results, but
not the rendering time! I actually ran the render on two different machines once
I
realized that I wouldn't make the deadline with just one computer chugging at
it.

Most of the objects were modeled in Rhino. These were then exported to POV 
as meshes. Rhino makes short work of complex models and interfaces well with
POV.

The RC Car was originally intended to star in it's own POV animation (still
might someday) and was modeled mainly with POV primitives with a little S-Patch
and Rhino for body panels and wheels respectively. You miss out on a lot of the

details at this distance. For example, it has a fully functional, parameter
driven 
suspension system complete with isosurface springs.

The building-block castle was created with some POV macro programming. Blocks of

random sizes (weighted so standard sizes such as 2x4 are predominate, and so
freak
sizes don't appear) are placed randomly on the floor in a circle around it.

The closet and window frame were created with some POV macro programming.

The textures are pretty generic. If I had more time I would have liked to
improve
on them. In my defense, however, any changes aren't very noticeable with the
radiosity
lighting model.

The posters are my own images. The F-16 was a CAD project from college, the car
is a
photo from the 2001 North American International Auto Show, and the knight is a
union
of Rhino render, and scanned in sketch. All were tweaked in Paint Shop Pro.

The tricky part was getting the radiosity lighting to work. I had originally
intended
to leave the window uncovered and let a pool of moonlight spill onto the floor
and
provide the majority of the light for the room. A bright patch of carpet turned
out 
to be a terrible light source. It had to be entirely too bright to provide
sufficient
illumination, and I had problems removing radiosity artifacts during rendering.
During
a weekend trip to a relative's home, I just so happened to see a perfect example

of the lighting I wanted in my rendering. Lighting a small room was a set of
backlit 
blinds. When I got home I tried it out, and it worked amazingly well compared to
my 
previous attempt. The blinds are still a little bright, but I'm happy with the
amount
of illumination in the room. Keep in mind, though, that the image is best viewed
in a
dark room with a bright monitor.

The source code included omits most of the objects for size reasons. The scene
is 
still perfectly renderable as-is with MegaPov 0.7.



