TITLE: One ring to rule them all...

NAME: Rick Montgomery
COUNTRY: US

EMAIL: rickm@mac.com
WEBPAGE: http://home.earthlink.net/~rickmontgomery/

TOPIC: Fantasy and Mystic
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: onering.jpg
ZIPFILE: onering.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    MacMegaPov0.7 X PPC feb 2 2001


TOOLS USED: 
    GraphicConverter (to convert PNG output to JPEG format)


RENDER TIME: 
    78 hours and some odd minutes


HARDWARE USED: 
    iMac DV SE (400 MHz PowerPC, 384 MB RAM)


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

This scene represents the twenty Rings of Power in one of the two Orbs of
Seeing, from Lord of the Rings.

The Orb is shown as a crystal ball on a wooden base. Placed inside the ball are
models of the twenty rings:

Arrayed in a hexagon near the top of the ball are the seven dwarf rings. The
dwarves were very fond of gold, and although each dwarf ring is unique, all are
made entirely of gold.

Just below the dwarf rings are the three elf rings. These were not made by
Sauron, as were the others, but by the elves, and they were hidden from Sauron.
Therefore they shouldn't really be here, but I took some artistic license. The
elf rings were set with gems--one with sapphire, one with adamant (diamond),
and one with ruby. I chose a star ruby so I could use a cabochon cut since I
had already used an emerald cut for the sapphires. 

Arrayed around the bottom of the orb are the nine rings of the Nazgul. Unlike
the dwarf rings and the elf rings, the human rings are all identical. Men,
Tolkein wrote, were the easiest for Sauron to sway, so I figured a generic ring
would have sufficed to entice them: a little gold, a little power, and they
were convinced. I thought a brimstone inlay in these rings would convey both
the power that the men who wore these rings sought to gain, and the torment
they ultimately endured as Ring Wraiths.

Finally, in the center of the orb is the One Ring. It's shown at twice the scale
of the other rings to represent its dominion over the others. It is a pure gold
ring, inscribed in the Elvish alphabet as described by Tolkein, "Ash nazg
durbatul_k, ash nazg gimbatul; ash nazg thrakatul_k, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul"
("One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them; one ring to bring them all,
and in the darkness bind them").



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


The image was created entirely in POV-Ray's scene description language. 

For the gems in the elf-rings, I used shapes and textures from gems.inc,
original author unknown, downloaded from the website of Albert Goodman, Deakin
University (http://www.deakin.edu.au/~agoodman/), via a link on the official
POV-Ray website
(http://www.povray.org/links/POV-Ray_Include_Macro_and_Object_Files/Include_File
s/). I hope this doesn't disqualify my entry!

For the inscription in the One Ring, I used the Tengwar Noldor font, one of
several excellent Tengwar fonts by Dan Smith. Permission to use these fonts as
"postcard-ware" is granted on Dan's web page
(http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/4948/tengwar.htm).

I originally intended this scene to represent the Orb of Seeing in the Tower of
Saruman, but I think it morphed into the other orb, in the other tower. The
darkish sky (which was supposed to be even darker) is suggestive of the dark
land of Mordor, and/or the Longest Night, when the ldarkness spilled out of
Mordor and enveloped all of Middle-Earth. 

I wanted to show a volcano on the horizon, spewing black smoke to explain the
darkened sky, but I ran out of time (partially because I set to work creating a
terrain modeling program for the Macintosh, which is coming along rather nicely
although obviously not in time for me to use it here) and wound up with just an
infinite plane for the workd outside. I also wanted to show a few trees on the
ground below to give a sense of height (the tower is actually 40 feet off the
ground, but you can't tell because of the featureless terrain).

I wrote some interesting macros for use in this scene. This is the first time
I've made use of POV's macro capability, and I love it! I find myself writing
more and more macros as I go along. Anyway, the ones I used here include:

Three kinds of rings--a CSG difference of two cylinders, an intersection of two
tori, and a single torus distorted as necessary to yield the desired dimensions
(OD, ID, and height);

A lissajous macro, which I used to engrave designs on a couple of dwarf-rings
and to create the braided band of the diamond elf-ring; and

A text-in-a-circle macro. This is a variation (made necessary by the quirks of
Tengwar writing) on a more general macro which is in turn a work in progress.
The general form of the macro uses the exact string to be rendered, and draws
one character at a time; this version renders chunks of characters at a time,
and they are delimited in the input string by vertical bars. All this was made
necessary by the fact that Tengwar vowels are placed as diacriticals above an
adjacent consonant, and the original macro couldn't quite handle the overlaying
of multiple characters in the same space.

I've been rendering scenes for my own enjoyment off and on for a few years. This
is my first entry in the IRTC, and I didn't get started until well into the
submission period. It's been a real learning experience so far. Next time I do
this I'll give myself more time, and pick scene elements that I already have
the wherewithal to create!

