TITLE: After the rain
NAME: Nicolas "N'x" Calimet
COUNTRY: France
EMAIL: nx@chez.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.chez.com/nx (under construction)

TOPIC: Elements
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: afterain.jpg
ZIPFILE: afterain.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.0 (UNIX)

TOOLS USED: 
    GForge (height-field), Photoshop (text, JPEG conversion)

RENDER TIME: 
    4 days 13 hours 35 min. (using -UL switch)

HARDWARE USED: 
    Digital Alpha 440 Mhz, 2 Gb RAM.


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


   Water is known to be the most important element on Earth, because
it is both almost everywhere and necessary for life (how lucky we are).
I decided to show a landscape when I realized that it was the simpliest
and realistic way to depict that multimorphous element. I tried to combine
several representations of water: lake, droplets (on the bushs, yet not
really visible), clouds, and a wet atmosphere (but no ice, sigh). Hence,
the kind of weather you get when the rain is over.
   This is actually a landscape in France I know for quite a long time:
the Serre-Pon_on's artificial lake. The lonely chapel is a relic of
the old village that was submerged when came the waters, 40 years ago.
It makes me feel how small we are beside the nature, even if sometimes
we've got the power to change -- or to destroy it.
   My first "real" picture with Povray.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


   Well, nothing really complicated. I actually tried to focus on the
photo-realism that allows ray-tracing. Say, I spent quite a long time
to do the fine-tuning for everything (as everybody, I know).

   * Brain and text editor for conception, but nothing's clever :_(

   * Sun is a simple light, but super-sampled atmosphere does all the
job. I choose the type 2 atmosphere to better control the background
visibility. Really long to render...

   * Clouds are just a scaled sphere with bozo pigment.

   * Moutains and the hill for the chapel are copies of a single height-
field created with GForge. Since the view is against the light, it uses
a simple texture (bozo again). Not visible at all, but I feel more
comfortable using it ;)

   * Chapel is a CSG combination of basic shapes. Seems to be the less
realistic object, even when adding noise and stuffs like that in texture.
Details are increased in that way (thick door and window). I couldn't
spend too much time for that object. Aouch.

   * Tree and bushs are the **fast** include files from Neil Alexander
(May-June Winner). I changed a few stuffs inside, like branch length.
Reflection and a single water droplet are added to each leaf in bushs.
I planed to use my own tree include file, but it's still in developpment.

   * Light reflections on the lake are a 5*20 array of spotlights turned
toward the camera, with "random noise" in their positions. Designed to
create that dazzling light around the chapel. Beware: it requires lots
of memory (around 250 Mbytes) if you don't turn off light buffers (-UL).
Maybe should be replaced with flares, e.g. NKFlare sparkles, or halo
to speed up rendering. 

   * Focal blur (hi-sampled too) for the foreground. Tiiiiime consuming.

   * ...

   * Ah, forgot, I added fog to highlight the scene, particulary on the
right part. No brightness/contrast or gamma correction is applied.

   Hope that's some picture :)

        N'x

