EMAIL: richard_morton@hotmail.com
NAME: Richard Morton	
TOPIC: History
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: R.I.P. 20th Century 
COUNTRY: England
WEBPAGE:
RENDERER USED: POVRAY 3.1
TOOLS USED: trial v1 and error v1.21 
RENDER TIME:
HARDWARE USED: Pentium II-350 128Mb
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

During the 20th Century more people have been killed as a result of war than
in the rest of history put together (approx. 160 Million and still counting).

The image portrays what to me is one of the most negative aspects of the history of the 20th 
Century. It was partly inspired by a Junior School Trip to France in the early 70s when we studied 
the D-Day landings (as well as improving French language and learning about the culture). As well 
as seeing some of the landing beaches and museums we visited a war cemetery and I was struck by 
the scale and the orderliness of the graves. It seemed a very peaceful place in stark contrast to 
the reasons for its' existence. Anyone who has been to such a place cannot fail to be moved.        

It is not meant to be a realistic representation, more symbolic (which is my feeble excuse for not 
including other objects e.g. buildings, walls, trees, sky, Tom Hanks). 

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

This is my first entry to the IRTC.

The Grass was made by creating a TGA from a Jade textured plane 
(source jademap.pov in the zip file rendered at 160*120 no AA) and then using the tga as a bump 
map. By experimenting I found that I needed to add some turbulence to avoid the 
edges of the original TGA being visible and distracting the eye.

The cross shape was generated from primitives mainly by trial and error (I
really should invest in a pencil and some paper). The curved corners to the 
stones were a bit of an afterthought from when I looked at my original slides from the trip 
(taken on my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic).The texture was taken 
from the excellent supplied stones textures and slightly modified. 

The embossed text was somewhat fiddly to position and only really looks OK 
on the foreground cross (and adds significantly to the render time). 

Although the war cemeteries are very well ordered there is inevitably 
some variance in positioning of the stones. I included a random element to 
the translates to allow for this (without it the image is too uniform).

I know that using a plane for the grass was an easy option and makes the 
whole image a little flat, so I would welcome comments on how to make a 
a gentle landscape and translate objects to sit on the landscape at the 
appropriate height.             
