TITLE: The thin wall
NAME: Gilles Tran
COUNTRY: France
EMAIL: tran@inapg.inra.fr
WEBPAGE: http://www.oyonale.com
TOPIC: Contrast
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: gt_wall.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Megapov 0.6a

TOOLS USED: 
    Poser 4.03, sPatch, Spilin, 3DWin

RENDER TIME: 
    1 week

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium III 733

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

The only important thing to say is that though there's a 
clear separation between the left and right part of the 
scene, they do interact: radiosity and direct lighting 
make the colours bleed and blend. 
Also, the scene of the right appears on the TV screen 
(as seen  by a person that would be standing behind the 
woman's right shoulder).
So that there less contrast that one could think...

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

========
Notes
========
Some objects, like the toilet bowl or the VCR, were
downloaded from the Internet to be used as placeholders 
until I modelled them properly, but I ran out of time. 

I'm reasonably pleased with the Poser characters, though
there is a margin for improvement. The man is far too 
muscular and hairless. The skin of the woman is quite 
plastic. I tried the skin shader in Vahur Krouverk's
Povman patch but it didn't work better in these settings
(however it has been used to create the framed image
on the wall of the TV room). The hair is not very good. 
It should have some reflection but the render time went 
up the roof during the tests.

The atmosphere is not 100atisfying, with a "dollhouse"
effect due to too much order and cleanliness. Fixing this 
by weathering the textures and adding other small objects 
would have required more time.

The shadows are too dark, in both rooms. You'll see more
detail if you change the gamma, but then the lit parts
will appear washed out.

This scene relies heavily on Megapov's radiosity and 
wouldn't have been possible without the improvements 
made by Nathan Kopp, and without the search for good
radiosity settings carried out by various people in the 
Povray newsgroups. The tests were run with fast low-quality 
radiosity settings, changed to high-quality ones for 
near-final and final renders. The scene file contains 
various switches to turn on and off radiosity, area lights 
or the apparition of some elements.

The whole scene file directory contains about 150 Mb of 
files, because of the big meshes, image maps and related 
files. From what I've seen in the tests, 
the memory use is probably in the 200-300 Mb range. 
I restarted the render several times, so I don't know 
the real figure, but stopping the rendering cleanly 
always caused several minutes of disk trashing.

Mesh conversion was made with Thomas Baier's 3DWin. 

Image maps were painted or modified with Picture Publisher. 
UV maps were in some cases created with Steve Cox's 
UVMapper.

=========
Object list
=========
Here is a description of the objects.
From left to right:
---------
TV room
---------
Walls: boxes textured with a image map

TV: modelled in sPatch, exported to mesh2 format, 
and then completed with CSG (button panel and screen). 
The screen is actually made of two parts: one is a 
transparent image map that filters the area light behind 
and the other (visible) one is another image map with 
no_shadow (so it can be seen but does not contribute to 
the scene lighting).

TV table: all CSG, coded from a real life one.

VCR: downloaded from 3D Cafe, converted to mesh2.

Carpet: a height field made from a noisy image.

Library: (barely visible) made with my Library macro, 
with some changes in the cover pattern finishes.

Lamp: CSG with an helix1 isosurface.

Photo on the wall: CSG frame. The image itself is a render 
of a previous version of the female character.

Cables (on the floor and ceiling): CSG using the spline 
function in Megapov.

Couch: modelled in sPatch and directly exported to Povray 
as Bezier patches.

Man: "Michael" figure, pants and hair model from Zygote, 
posed in Poser 4.03, converted to mesh2. The maps are a 
mixture of original maps and other found in Renderosity 
and various Poser sites.

Glass (in the man's hand): modelled in sPatch, imported in 
Poser to fit the hand.

Halogen lamp: CSG, modelled after a real life lamp.

Magazine on couch: modelled in sPatch, directly exported 
to Povray. The texture is a screenshot of web pages.

Beer cans (on the floor and on the couch): CSG models taken 
from Fabien Mosen's Fridge image from the IRTC Imaginary 
worlds round. Maps taken from the internet.

Remote control (on the couch): downloaded from the 3D Cafe, 
converted to mesh2.

----------
Bathroom
----------
Coat hanger, light switch and toilet bowl shelves : CSG.

Sponges (top shelf): modelled with an isosurface.

Bottles on the shelf above the toilet bowl: CSG mixture 
of lathe objects made with Spiline and other primitives. 
Maps painted in Picture Publisher.

Rolls of toilet paper : cylindrical isosurfaces

Toilet bowl and toilet paper dispenser: downloaded from 
the 3D Cafe and converted to mesh2.

Sink: a lath object modelled in Spilin. The lathe was cut 
in two and each half scaled differently. Pipes were made 
with CSG.

All pieces of furniture: CSG, with a macro to make the 
front parts. A bump map was used to give a better surface 
for some of them.

Woman: "Victoria" figure and hair (Jim Burton's Hollywood 
hair) from Zygote, posed in Poser 4.03, converted to mesh2.
The maps are a mixture of original maps and other found in 
Renderosity and various Poser sites.

Mirror: CSG, shelves modelled after a real life one.

Bottles and cup on the shelves: CSG mixture of lathe 
objects made with Spiline and other primitives. Maps painted in 
Picture Publisher.

Faucet: downloaded from the 3D Cafe and converted to mesh2.

Soap, soap holder, toothbrush, brush, lipstick tubes: CSG, 
modelled after real life objects.

Toothpaste tube: modelled in sPatch after a real one, 
converted to obj format and uv-mapped with UVmapper, 
then converted to mesh2. 

Photos on the wall: Bezier patches with uv mapping of real 
photos. A macro makes the corners rise up.

Basket: a Poser prop that came with Catherine Todd's "Period
dress" (brokered by Zygote), converted to mesh2. 
The map is the original one.

Clothes: various clothes from Victoria's clothing pack, 
flattened and folded in Poser 4, then converted to mesh2.

Carpet and towels : height fields painted with noise in 
Picture Publisher.

Floor: CSG, assembled with a macro.




