TITLE: "curious goods"
NAME: Denton Gentry
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: denny1@home.com
WEBPAGE: http://members.home.net/denny1/rolemaster/
TOPIC: Imaginary Worlds
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: criusgds.jpg
ZIPFILE: criusgds.zip
RENDERER USED: 

        Pov Ray 3.1a Macintosh PPC


TOOLS USED: 

        BBEdit (text editor)
        ClarisWorks (for the GIF image)
        Quicktime PictureViewer (to convert to jpg)


RENDER TIME: 
    17 hours 20 minutes


HARDWARE USED: 

        PowerMac 8500 (PPC 604e 180 MHz), 160 MB RAM




IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

  Edwin, the Loremaster, has just stepped out in a rush.

  He is a bit absentminded, and has left a candle burning (its ok,
  Mathilda will snuff it out shortly). Mathilda is Edwin's
  faithful assistant. Mathilda is a cursed shapeshifter,
  assuming any of a vast number of animal and plant shapes
  with no control over the form. Fortunately Mathilda can still
  move about and grasp things in all forms, even as a rosemary
  bush as shown here.

  Edwin has also left his spectacles, (so we must hope that his task
  will not require him to read anything), and his rain cap: its the
  one on the center stand on the table in back. He's still wearing
  his "indoor" hat, which would sit on the stand on the right were
  he not wearing it. He'll probably ruin yet another indoor hat by
  wearing it out in the rain (its ok, the remaining hat on the stand
  is a spare). Being a gnome, having the proper hat for every
  occasion is very important for Edwin.

  In fact, the only thing Edwin always remembers to do before leaving
  is flip the sign over to the "OUT" position. We can see the wear
  marks on the sign where Edwin's thumb has grasped it. Strangely,
  gnomish skin oils are slightly corrosive to wood, and they have to
  use an additive in their paper making process to ensure that their
  precious books do not suffer for it.

  With the coming of the Coalition Edwin dove headfirst into the study
  of their tools and methods. The back room (formerly a alchemical lab)
  has been converted into a machine room. The Coalition Mk 30 shipborne
  computer system can be seen prominently. Any resemblance to a Cray-1
  of 20th century Earth is entirely coincidental.

  Edwin rushed out after reading an item he just printed from an
  obscure site on the Coalition data network. This "Chronicle"
  has an eerily accurate account of the actions of a group of
  Ascension fighters and their struggles against the minions of
  the Unlife. It is up to Edwin to find the source of this
  information, and make sure it poses no threat to the Ascension.
  Unfortunately, he also forgot to bring the printout with him,
  leaving it on the desk under his spectacles.

  Also on the desk we see a few items brought here for study by
  the very group detailed in the Chronicle. The flute is an ancient
  Elvish artifact of the First Era. It is magical, though its exact
  powers are unknown (which is why it is here being studied by a Loremaster).
  The Mana Compass points in the direction of the nearest Earth Node,
  an ability which has proven valuable on several occasions. The pocket
  computer contains details of Coalition military deployments in the area.

  The pipe bowl is just a pipe bowl, Edwin finds Halfling pipe-weed
  to be very relaxing. The books are works Edwin was consulting,
  pulled from the reference stacks in the back room, which is barely
  visible in the rear of the shop. The most commonly consulted reference
  works are kept on the front shelves arrayed about Edwin's desk.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

  The paper in the foreground is a bicubic_patch. The text is a GIF
  image of the opening text from the chronicle for the Rolemaster
  role playing game group I play in, the "Imaginary World" of this
  scene. The Chronicle is hosted at
  http://members.home.net/denny1/rolemaster/

  The glasses resting on the paper are CSG of spheres and torii.
  The bifocals are made via intersections of the basic lens shape
  with a truncated cylinder, with a different index of refraction
  for the bifocal versus the main lens.

  The candle is a blob, of cylinders and spheres. Staring at a candle
  flame for hours is a great way to relax. Candle flame is slightly
  bluish and mostly transparent at the bottom, becoming suddenly
  bright yellow slightly above the wick. Viewed close up the candle
  flame never comes to a single point, always a hollow-tip cone.
  Unfortunately the model of the hollow-tip cone looks wierd from a
  distance so a simple cone is used in this scene.

  The books are boxes and cylinders, with text on the spine. They
  are constructed from arrays of titles, textures, and measurements.
  This caused a problem late in the project when I attempted to move
  to a Sparcstation to get faster rendering times: POV-Ray 3.1 is not
  available for SunOS/Solaris yet, only 3.0.2 (which lacks arrays).
  So the Sparc could only be used for experimentation with the books
  commented out, the final rendering was done on a Macintosh.

  Mathilda is a screaming horde of cylinders. The Mathilda model had
  to be simplified drastically from my original plan, as it took 3
  days on the PowerMac to render (the Sparcstation was able to render
  the same scene in 15 hours, albeit without the bookks due to lack of
  arrays).

  The Cray in the back room was constructed by referencing various
  pictures found at supercomputer sites on the net. It is a Cray-1,
  circa 1976 and still an amazing engineering achievement.
  Edwin's private electrical substation (required for a Cray-1)
  must be out back somewhere. One liberty was taken: the Cray-1 was
  generally painted a deep navy blue. Silicon Valley legend holds
  that when Apple Computer took delivery of their Cray Y-MP they
  said "nice machine, just one problem: its not purple". Cray
  rectified this flaw shortly (as did Edwin, apparently).

  The "Loremaster is OUT" sign is reversible with a #declare, for
  when Edwin returns.

  The Mana Compass and Palm Computer models were created last year
  for use as illustrations in the Chronicle.

CREDITS:
  MERO_DEM Truetype font courtesy of R. Kainhofer, Austria
  klang truetype font origin unknown
  Eureka_Wood texture used on the desk top courtesy Charles
        Fusner (http://www.enter.net/~cfusner)
  Sonya Roberts's plants.inc and books.inc were inspirational (though not
        used in the scene)
  special thanks to Marc Mangus, GameMaster of the Rolemaster game this
        image is based upon, and to Dave Brubeck, Helen Kittler, Lisa
        Paulick, Eric Peterson, Bryan Gebhardt, and Brian Mays, the regular
        players in that Rolemaster game.

