TITLE: Armor
NAME: Emory Stagmer
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: Emory_Stagmer@amecom.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.access.digex.net/~justgus/ezekiel/ersbio.html
TOPIC: Magic
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: ersarmor.jpg
ZIPFILE: ersarmor.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.01 Windows NT

TOOLS USED: 
    PhotoShop, LParser, SPatch

RENDER TIME: 
    about 10 hours

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium-133


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Once upon a time, back in the year 935 AD, three knights found
the most magical item.  A flameless torch, shining the most intense
light ever seen.  What was it?  How did it get there?

"Any sufficiently advanced tecnhology is indistinguishable from magic."
              Arthur C. Clarke

I know I'm not going to be the only one to use this theme, but since
it's one of my favorite quotes, I'm using it anyhow.  I think this 
image works well on two levels.  From the perspective of the knights
in the image, the flashlight is "magic".  From OUR perspective how
did it get there?  We don't know of any technology making that
possible, so we can also say it's "magic".


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


There are alot of folks to thank for the stuff in here.  Nothing's
blatently copied, but several elements or ideas are used and I want
to be sure to acknowledge them all.
First, Denis Olivier: Merci beacoup!  Your idea for the two dimensional
trees in a night scene was just what I already had in mind and the
idea saved hundreds of rendering hours!
Second, Derek Owens: Nice trees and plants which you have made available
to the raytracing public.  I really will try to drop a shareware 'thanks'
in the mail.  I wanted to put some plants on the ground, but ran out of
time (don't we all?!)
Third, to whoever it was that suggested the idea for a finish{ambient 6} 
on a starfield to account for anti-aliasing: Take a look! It's GREAT!
Fourth, Laurens Lapre for the trees distributed with LParser.  They're great!

The trees are the biggest thing I want to talk about here.  Three
were from LParser distribution archive (Tree04, Tree10, Tree11) and
the other was from a distribution by Derek Owens.
I output them to a POV file, and set all the colors to black, white
background, no lights or other objects, and rendered them.  In Photoshop
I converted them to a B/W 2 color GIF (white background, palette #0).
The black was actually just a little grey so I could change their ambient
light in the final render and make it so you could distinguish individual
trees.  Then I used them as an image map onto a thin box.  I scaled the
boxes by a random amount, altered their height by a random amount (making
the trunks shorter essentially), gave them a random amount of ambient
light, moved them by a random amount away from the camera, and rotated
them a random amount around the camera.  Yes there is actually a woods
all around the camera and central scene.  I wanted to make sure that any
light or reflections off the armor looked right.  These woods will look
find for any camera rotation, but if you get too far from the origin
you will notice that they are really just two dimensional.  BUT they
render about 100 times as fast! AND in a night scene like this they
really are two dimensional anyway.  That would be true from a great
distance also, but then you may have to have more than just one
grey color (one from DO has some green in it. It's a 6 color GIF).

The torches have 7 light sources, one in the center and 6 around the
perimeter of the flame.  I probably should have used an area light, 
it would have rendered faster in the long run and looked the same
as the 6.

The guy in the center has a CSG torso and helmet (I really liked this
helmet, but my dust halo for the flashlight really obscures it in the
final image...oh well no time to re-render!).  All the other armor
was created in SPatch.
Hands were created in WinBlobs.  They don't look much like real hands,
but the make really good leather gloves!

The guy on the left has my face!  The picture is from my badge at work!
I scanned it and took out the glasses in Photoshop, then placed it on a
cylinder inside the helmet.  The only thing is I part my hair on the other
side...must be a rotation thing...

The guy on the left also ended up with a dis-embodied hand.  It's that
outtatime thing...it's 1:45 AM here in the eastern US and so I've got
1:15 before the deadline (midnight Pacific time) and I'm bailing on 
any more tweaks.  Hope you like this!

    Emory R. Stagmer
    Bass/12string/keyboards for Ezekiel's Wheel
        http://www.access.digex.net/~justgus/ezekiel
    Programmer, woodworker, and occasional Raytracer!

