TITLE: A Study In Scarlet
NAME: Stephen M. Farrell
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: StephenF@whoever.com
WEBPAGE: N/A
TOPIC: Mystery
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: study25.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray for Windows 3.5

TOOLS USED: 
    POV-Ray for Windows 3.5; Paint Shop Pro 7 (for signature and jpg
conversion)

RENDER TIME: 
    30 hours 45 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 4 2.53 GHz; 1 GB RAM



IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


  I tried to create a scene which works on two levels - first, for the casual
observer, something which is instantly recognizable as a scene from a typical
mystery novel.  But, for the more astute observer, I included nods to several
well-known (in most cases) mystery novels/plays/etc (I count nine intentional
homages (including the title reference), although a few may not be as
recognizable as I would have liked.) A list of these references appears at the
end of this file.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


  Finally, after three and a half years, I managed to create a scene which comes
close to matching what I could see in my mind's eye.  It's about time!

  Just a few notes about how some of the objects were created.

  The body, once again, is a blob object.  My intention was to get something
that at least looks decent without spending forever on it, and I think I
succeeded pretty well here.  (Of course, not showing the face, hands, or feet
helps a lot.)  The blood on the floor, the seat and back of the chair, and the
statuette (which doesn't look good at all) on the desk are all blobs as well.

  The curtain is an isosurface which uses a pigment function - not perfect, but
I think it looks pretty good.  The floorlamp is a lathe, as are the light
bulbs.  The vase is also a simple lathe, as are the legs of the coffee table.

  The mirror frame uses sphere_sweeps, and I think I got it to look pretty good
pretty quickly.  The glass of the mirror, however, seemed to cause no end of
problems.  For some reason using a reflection value of 1 didn't look quite
right to me, even after adjusting all the other finish values as much as I
could.  I finally decided to try a value of 2 for reflection, which seemed to
give me the look I was going for, but it was way too bright.  I tried adjusting
the other values to compensate, but that didn't seem to help.  Finally I
noticed that lowering the pigment value of the glass object helped to dim it,
but even a value of rgb <0, 0, 0> wasn't enough.  I ended up using rgb <-4, -4,
-4>, which seems very odd to me, but I think it works.

  I used my standard radiosity settings here, which worked well up until the
final render, when some annoying bright spots appeared on the books.  Although
running out of time, I made some adjustments, which helped the bright spots but
also created a few dark blotches elsewhere (most noticable on the vase, and
some on the window struts).  Hopefully it doesn't look too bad, though. And
hopefully it didn't turn out too dark... my intention was to create a room
that's heavily shadowed in spots, and it looks good on my monitor.  If I got it
right, you should be able to just make out the individual books on the shelf,
although they should be fairly dark.   

  The rest of the scene is pretty much csg.  By the way, the painting in the
outer room is Mondrian's Composition A: Composition wth Black, Red, Gray,
Yellow and Blue.  The jack-o-lantern painting reflected in the mirror is a
POV-Ray scene I created a while back just for fun.

  I really enjoyed creating this one, and am pretty happy with how it turned
out... hope others enjoy it as well.  All comments/criticism greatly
appreciated.

---------------------------------------

List of References to Novels/Plays/etc:  

A Study In Scarlet - A. Conan Doyle (overall)
The Mousetrap - Agatha Christie (under coffee table)
Black Coffee - Agatha Christie (on coffee table)
Cards On The Table - Agatha Christie (on coffee table)
The ABC Murders - Agatha Christie (alphabet blocks on mantel)
The Mirror Crack'd (From Side to Side) - Agatha Christie (mirror)
Hallowe'en Party - Agatha Christie (reflection in mirror)
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett (statuette on desk)
The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian - Lawrence Block (painting in outer room)

