TITLE: Haunted
NAME: Hildur Kolbrun Andresdottir
COUNTRY: Iceland
EMAIL: hildurka@simnet.is
WEBPAGE: n/a
TOPIC: Mystery
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: haunted.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.5

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray 3.3, Photoshop, Corel Draw

RENDER TIME: 
    Approx 2 hours

HARDWARE USED: 
    Amd Athlon 1200 mHz, 512 mb RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

This is a quiet evening. You sit down with a nice cup of tea and a good book. An
hour goes by and it_s getting late. The fire will soon be dying out and you
start to feel chilly.
This must be a draft, you think and glance at the clock. It_s just past
midnight, time for bed. 
Suddenly, for no apparent reason, some books drop from their shelves, right in
front of you. 
You jump off your chair in panic and step instinctively away from the books. In
the process you knock over your chair. 
You feel the temperature dropping in the room. It now feels freezing. 
A couple of more books fall down on the floor.
You try to reassure yourself. This is just a coincidence. I must have been
careless when I picked the book from the shelf earlier.
Still you can_t help gazing down the hallway, into the darkness. 
You try to resist it, but fear starts creeping in. 
You are not alone. Somebody or something is here.

The inspiration to the layout of this scene is taken from the website dedicated
to the Borley Rectory, "The Most Haunted House In England". 
www.borleyrectory.com
The short version of this story: http://borleyrectory.com/misc/history.htm 
All copyrights are owned by it_s author, Vincent O'Neil, President, Borley Ghost
Society, who kindly gave me permission to base my scene on material from his
website. 

In short: There were reports from a lot of different people of paranormal
activity in and around the rectory, that go a long way back. This includes
almost every thinkable type of paranormal activity, poltergeist, throwing
things, ghosts seen or heard, writing appearing on walls, strange lights in
windows, etc. The list is endless. Finally the house mysteriously burned down
in the late thirties, after being empty for some time. People have been
investigating these reports for decades, trying to figure out what really
happened there. 
My guess is that we will never know, it will remain a mystery forever.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

Firstly I want to thank Michael Hunter for his invaluable insights during this
process.
The fireplace (lots of CSG_s) is loosely based on a photo from the rectory. It
took a while to model but I liked the style, it_s a bit unusual. The pattern is
a heightfield.
The rest of the room is CSG_s, also the furniture, some items are rot sweeps and
the floor is generated with the wall plugin in Moray.  
The lighting is mostly area lights, one inside the lamp, one in front of the
fireplace to enhance the patterns, one faint dark blue in the hallway. I use
caustics on the glass material for the lamp to cast more light on the wall
behind it. 
I use radiosity with very low settings to keep the contrast between dark and
light, count only 15. Lowest I_ve ever used. Finally I put a filter in front of
the camera with a blue-yellow gradient to create a contrast of temperature.

Enjoy!





