TITLE: Appalachian Trail
NAME: Dave Merchant
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: kosh@nesys.com
WEBPAGE: www.nesys.com
TOPIC: The Wilderness
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: apalachn.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    povray 3.1a Watcom

TOOLS USED: 
    Photoshop for JPEG conversion and image map creation

RENDER TIME: 
    1 hour 37 min 10 secs

HARDWARE USED: 
    P200, 64 mb RAM, w98

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


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                          The Wilderness

Untouched and unseen by humans. Deep jungles, primal forests, rugged
mountain tops, sunbaked deserts, boundless plains, isolated icecaps.
Places where nature holds sway and man is unknown or insignificant. 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

...A scene along the Appalachian Trail.

Americans have a real problem with accepting the idea of the Wilderness as
being untouched and unseen. The Wilderness is something to be "used".
It must be hiked, ridden, climbed, collected, grabbed, kayaked, BASE jumped,
skied, snowboarded, conquered.

Many US "wilderness" areas are so heavily used that advance reservations
are required.

So here are the symbols of the American Wilderness experience: a granola
wrapper, a pop can, "waffle stomper" boots and trail bike tracks,
and some fallen leaves squashed into the mud. All that is missing is
some artifact with the word "Xtreme" on it.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


I've always made big, complex images, and decided to do something small for
a change. So this is one square foot of dirt and trash.

The ground is a heightfield, constructed in Photoshop from several
components:

1. Basic ground is the same heightfield I previously created to represent
   ocean waves in my Atlantic Passage scene.
2. Boots are a hiking boot I scanned in. In order to get enough contrast,
   I painted the raised tread with white shoe polish, and let it dry a
   *long* time before putting it on my scanner!
3. Trail bike tracks were created as a heightfield in POV, with transverse
   shading to produce the curvature of the tread. I tried a more complex
   tread pattern, but this made the scene less clear, so I went back to a
   very basic tread.
4. Standing water puddles produced by a plane of T_Beerbottle_Glass.
   It might have been better to use a glass box instead of a plane.
5. Some leaves are used as an image map, to represent those squashed into
   the mud, others are rendered in 3-D.
6. A crackle finish was used to represent grainy soil. I ran out of time
   to get the texture exactly right.

Leaves and granola wrapper are SPATCH.

SLAM can is CSG, with an image map applied.
SLAM can fonts are Jokerman and Viner Hand ITC.

Try to visualize the "Xtreme" object, I guess it's just out of the picture.

