TITLE: Down the drain
NAME: Thomas de Groot
COUNTRY: Netherlands
EMAIL: t.degroot@inter.nl.net
WEBPAGE: none (yet)
TOPIC: Absence
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: dtd.jpg
ZIPFILE: dtd.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    megaPOV 1.2.1

TOOLS USED: 
    World Machine BE 1.25, Leveller 2.5, Silo 1.4, Moray 3.5,
POV-Ray/Megapov 1.21, Poser 5, PoseRay 3.10

RENDER TIME: 
    2 hours 40 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    HP Pavilion Media Center m7490.nl; Pentium D 930 dual-core;
2x3GHz


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

When the K'taah drained the world's oceans to replenish their hydroponic tanks,
this proved to be a major inconvenience for everybody on Earth. 
(However, this was nothing compared to when they flushed back their recycled
sludge, before leaving...)


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

Landscape:
The height_field was first built in World Machine, exported to Leveller where
camera settings were established and a groundpoint file for the trees was
calculated. The basic scene file was then exported from Leveller to POV-Ray.
In the foreground, a second height_field was added to simulate the ripples in
the sand.

Objects, includes and macros:
- The height_fields were textured using slope and altitude. I leaned heavily on
Rune Johansen_s demo-scene slopemt.pov to achieve my purpose. Most textures are
my own or reworked from others. Special mention however for the sandstone
texture by PM2Ring;
- For the sky I used the _Moon_ technique developed by Bill Pragnell. This
ensured the distance effect for the gigantic starships (or are they condos?).
Texturing, light, and fog were selected according to a technique developed by
Gilles Tran;
- The clouds are a df3 file made with Gilles Tran_s MakeCloud macro;
- The sea gulls in the sky are blobs, originally modelled by Mick Hazelgrove for
his IRTC entry: Preacher. I worked further on the model and included it in a
random distribution macro;
- The standing water body is a simple texture macro developed by Gilles Tran;
- The trees are very basic mesh2 objects, originally built in Moray from bicubic
patches, then finished in Silo;
- The shells on the sand were modelled in Moray with the Seashell plugin by
Philippe Gibone;
- The rocks were made with the Makerocks include by John van Sickle;
- The classical pillar segments are CSG models built in Moray;
- The rusty anchor, likewise, is CSG built in Moray;
- Silo was used to build the meshes for the wreck in the middle foreground, the
jetty to the left, the piece of driftwood in the foreground right and a metal
drain to the right, which was cancelled at a later stage;
- I couldn_t refrain myself! I just wanted to use the greebles macros by Zeger
Knaepen, so that resulted in the starships in the background;
- Last but not least, I made heavily use of the very useful Position Finder
macro by Norbert Kern. Without that macro I would have lost valuable time in
searching for the correct position of all the displayed objects. With the
macro, it was simply a question of minutes. See:
<web.4478509041a06b1c9bff7e8b0@news.povray.org>;

Third-party objects:
A number of third-party objects were used in this scene.
- The ship to the right (San Juan): Taschen 3D objects collection. Very detailed
mesh model I often like to use whenever I need a sailing ship somewhere;
- Lobster: Taschen 3D objects collection. Detailed mesh model;
- Lighthouse (Pensacola): by Bob Hugues. POV-Ray model. See:
http://news.povray.org/povray.text.scene-files/thread/%3C39a8ab59%40news.povray.
org%3E/?ttop=216446&toff=350;
- the boat to the left: a mesh object, originally modelled in sPatch by Anto
Matkovic (model seems not to be available anymore);
- Human figure: Poser 5 model;

All persons cited are kindly acknowledged.



