TITLE: Throne
NAME: Araldo van de Kraats
COUNTRY: The Netherlands
EMAIL: a.vandekraats@student.utwente.nl
WEBPAGE: -
TOPIC: Worship
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: throne.jpg
ZIPFILE: throne.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1g for Windows

TOOLS USED: 

        3D Studio Max 3.1
        Infinity Textures 1.1
        Photoshop 5.5
        3ds2pov.exe
        Windows 2000


RENDER TIME: 
    4 hours 7 minutes 7 seconds

HARDWARE USED: 
    Athlon 550 @ 650, 128 Mb

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Thousands of years ago, there was a mighty emperor who reigned a vast part of
what we 
now call Asia. His people loved and worshiped him, even hundreds of years after
his 
dead. This is an image of the throne of this sovereign. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


I used 3D Studio for the more complex models. One technique I used a lot is
lofting. 
For example the curves at the top of the pillars and the border of the back of
the
throne where made with lofting. Another technique I used in 3D Studio is making
a lathe
of an Bezier curve. For example the candlesticks and the bottom of the pillars,
are
lathe objects. Other things I used to model things in 3D Studio is Editable Mesh
(for
example the red material of the throne). The Flower-like object at the top of
the 
pillar is made, using NURBS.

The 3D Studio models where exported to 3ds files, and converted to POV-Ray
format,
using 3ds2pov.exe. Because this is the first POV-Ray project I did, using 3D
Studio
models, I didn't know the mesh object should be used for the imported
triangles,
instead of union (in this case, union is not accurate, very slow and consumes a
LOT of
memory). It took I while to discover this.
I did not include the files with the imported meshes, because I think they are
to large 
(about 36 Mb). You can email me if you want to see them.

The gems where modeled by using a difference of a sphere and some rotated
planes. The
sinuous shape at the back of the throne is made by a few thounsand cylinders
which are
scaled with a sinus function. I made a macro file to create boxes and cylinders
with rounded
edges. The rest of the shapes are mostly simple POV-Ray primitives, often used
in
combination with loops.

After I modeled everything, I only had two days left for texturing. For the wall
in the
back I got a stone texture from 3D Cafe. I used photoshop to edit an bump_map
for the wall.
The moon is an sphere with an picture of a moon on it. I used light_sources with
fading power, to
prevent the other lights in the scene from illuminate the shadow side of the
moon. The 
textures for the pillar, is an simple marble texture with a color_map. The floor
is a 
checker pattern, with textures from stones.inc. The gold textures where taken
from golds.inc.
The starfield I made with Infinty Textures and Photoshop. The bottom of the
throne is a 
modified texture from stones.inc. The seat is also an texture from stones.inc.

To illuminate the scene I used three area lights and a simple light for the
moon.

I rendered the picture at 1024x768, because at 800x600 too much detail was
lost.

