TITLE: The Lake
NAME: Tekno Frannansa
COUNTRY: UK
EMAIL: tek@evilsuperbrain.com
WEBPAGE: www.evilsuperbrain.com
TOPIC: Contrast
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: the_lake.jpg
ZIPFILE: the_lake.zip
RENDERER USED: 

        POV-Ray for Windows v3.1


TOOLS USED: 

        POV-Ray editor


RENDER TIME: 

        5h 52m 04s


HARDWARE USED: 

        PentiumIII 550MHz 256MB RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


When I discovered the subject this time was contrast, I immediately thought of a
yin/yang symbol. The image shows several contrasts: The light and dark, colour
and grey-scale, the yin/yang symbol, and the contrast between technology and
nature. I think I perhaps went a bit overboard with the whole "contrast" motif
:)

Technology is portrayed by a big trail of black smoke launching the space
shuttle towards the sun, and a drinks can carelessly discarded. The lake,
petals, reflection of the sky, and the insect on a lily pad represent nature.

The image portrays technology as yin, the bad half, though my initial work had
white smoke on a dark sky. So I ain't trying to say technology's bad or natures
good or vice versa. Read into it what you will.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


The yin/yang shaped cloud of smoke comes from a cunning piece of maths I
devised, to randomly position spheres within the 3D projection of the shape.

The main objects in the scene: the drinks can, shuttle, petals, insect, and lily
pad are all fairly straightforward bits of CSG. The shuttle has a blob for the
main body, it looked good at a distance so I  didn't bother with any details.
The lily pad and petals were added last. The former because the insect wasn't
round enough to form the dot of the yin/yang, and the latter because I wanted
to make the plane of the lake more obvious.

The lake itself is bump mapped with two onion textures, translated to the
position of the two dots of the yin/yang, and with a spherical drop off
applied. Earlier in development I spent several hours lining up ripples with
the feet of the insect, before deciding to put him on a lily pad, all that
wasted effort...

There are a few details I would have liked to spend more time on: The drinks can
isn't open, the petals have no detail, and the shuttle is a little difficult to
recognise. But, I've gotta drive down to somerset for christmas, and I'm also
working on an entry for the current animation competition, so I've done the
best I can in the time I have.

