TITLE: Sandbags Away

NAME: Neil Alexander
COUNTRY: Canada

EMAIL: stoker@echo-on.net
WEBPAGE: none

TOPIC: Elements
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: balloon.jpg
ZIPFILE: balloon.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray for Windows v3.02


TOOLS USED: 
    none


RENDER TIME: 
    approx. 12 hrs.


HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium II, 233 MHz


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    This scene shows a balloonist, swept low over the water by
unstable conditions, firing his burner and dropping his sandbags in order to
avoid splashing down; in effect, he is employing three of the elements to avoid
the fourth.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 
    For the background hills height
field, I used POV-Ray to create a black-and-white image. I used a crackle
color_map to make the rocks, and overlayed it with a clear-to-black bozo to
make the hill shapes.  I then used the same patterns and transformations with
colors to make the image map for the hills, so that the rock and grass colors
would exactly match the shapes. The water surface is also a height field from a
POV-Ray image.
    The splashing water is a blob object comprised of several ramdomly sized
paraboli with drops randomly placed along each arc.
    The other objects in the scene are typical CSG constructions, with a halo
for the fire, and POV-Ray's atmosphere function to add a nice touch to the
sky.

