TITLE: "A Winseat on the Water"
NAME: Jesse Becker
COUNTRY: United States of America
EMAIL: jesse@kesmai.com
WEBPAGE: none
TOPIC: Water
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: winonwat.jpg
ZIPFILE: winonwat.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.1a for Windows

TOOLS USED: 
    sPatch for the Seats, PaintShop Pro 4.2 for the image maps and file
conversion, and my brain for the rest

RENDER TIME: 
    8 hours, 37 minutes, 54 seconds.

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 133, 48MB RAM, Windows 95 ORS2

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Well, there's not much to be said this image, other than it is a
"Winseat" picture (yes, another one).  There is something of a joke
among the IRTC admins concerning this series of pictures, and it's
high time for me to pay my dues--and get my public flogging for making
another such image. <grin>

For this picture, I drew upon inspiration from three other images that 
have graced the IRTC in the past.  

The first is Bill Marrs' original "Winseat" image.  While simple, it
has a subtle spirit and originality that the other lack (he had the
guts to do it in the first place...).

        http://oz.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/1996-12-31/winseat.jpg

Chip Richard then raised the bar with his sequel image:  "Winseat2."
Technically more advanced than the first one, it still catpures all of
the charm and merit of the original "Winseat."

        http://oz.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/1997-02-28/winseat2.jpg

Finally, the genere took a turn to the slightly more abstract with
Sonya Roberts' "Is It Art?" image.  This master piece went on to use
such avant-garde methods as "straining your neck," and "paying large 
chiropractic bills" to let viewers get the complete experience.

        http://oz.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/1997-10-31/isitart.jpg

I humbly submit my entry "A Winseat on the Water" in the hopes it will
hang next to images a great as these.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


I built the image somewhat piecemeal, and the code for this is messier
than I usual write.

1.  PREPARATION:  Placed tongue firmly in cheek.

2.  WINDOWS:  I started with the window and spent a fair amount of time
figuring
out just how to get smooth transitions on the corners.  The shape of
the window where the glass is placed is cut out using an object the
shape of the window.  The molding on the side was then made with cones
and four sided polygons positioned to seamlessly coincide.  The parts
of the window are placed individually, along with the Shade and actual
'glass.'  The holes in the walls are cut from a plane, and the molding
then put into place.

3.  SEATS:  The seats were made with sPatch (everythign else was done
my my own two grubby hands).  In fact, the seats are only 'half' seats
since that would double the number of bicubic_patchs in the scene, and
likely increasy my rendering time by quite a bit for a side of the
seat that you will not even see.  If you look closely, you can see
what I am refering too.  It also turns out that while sPatch is
wonderful for modelling, it is not very efficient at placing patches
in the scene, and there are a lot of patches that could be removed
from the image completly with no change in how the scene would look.

4.  WATER:  The water inside the cabin is a height field that I made
with PaintShop Pro.  Nothing really fancy, but I've discovered that
the trick (for me at least) is to not go nuts with the elevation
changes.  Subtly is good.  The water outside the plane is a
huge polygon with a custom water texture placed on it.  The water
inside uses a slightly modified version of the standard "Water"
texture that comes with Povray.

5.  SKY:  Nothing special here...  It's a stock texture Sky texture 
from Povray made for sky_spheres.  Personally, I don't use the
sky_sphere object that Povray supports, and prefere to use an offset
sphere.  You simply make a huge sphere, and translate it 'down' as so:

        sphere {
         <0,-90000,0>,90100
        }

It works *very, very* well.

6.  PAPER :  The paper in the water is a bicubic_patch that I made my hand, and
on to which I mapped an image.

7.  TEXTURES:  The no smoking sign there for no good reason, and is
simply an image_map with some tranparency (so you can see the
wonderful beige background behind it).  The Seat texture was a bit
harder though.  That was done completely with Povray's internal
texture langauge.  I was trying for the 'cheesy '70's" look.

I placed everything by hand (with many rerenders when I goofed--
especially with the lights).  The lights were something of a problem; 
I wanted to make something a tad dark and foreboding, but it might be 
a bit too dark.

Before I forget, I want to thank Karl, Noel, Paul, Ron, Malcolm, Matthew, 
Marc, Mark, Michael, Mike, Mike (the other one), and Mikeal for putting up 
with me on my long rants.  (You guys know who you are)

