TITLE: Shangri-La
NAME: Bob Franke
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: bfranke2@home.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/bob_franke/pov/pov.htm
TOPIC: Fantasy and Mystic
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION
JPGFILE: shangila.jpg
ZIPFILE: shangila.zip
RENDERER USED: 

    POV-Ray 3.1g for Windows 95/98/NT


TOOLS USED: 

Keith Rule's Wcvt2pov
Jaime VivesPiqueres Cloud Macro
MilkShape 3D by Mete Ciragan
John P. Beale's Height Field Lab
AccuTrans 3D by MicroMouse Productions
Lview Pro for jpeg conversion and copyright note.
POV-Ray editor


RENDER TIME: 

38hr 27min


HARDWARE USED: 

generic Pentium-III w/ 256 MB RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

First of all, it's a fantasy, so nothing really has to 
make any sense.  This is an image of a small society at 
the top of the world, in a Shangri-La like setting.  At 
the base of the pyramid there is a group of people 
preparing to worship their god whose image is cast in 
stone on the mountain.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

John P. Beale's HF-Lab was used to create the height field.  
I used MilkShape to create the houses, people and the pyramid.  
The trees, weeds and Yoda are models from the 3-D Caf_. To 
save memory, AccuTrans 3D, WCVT2POV and MilkShape were used 
to convert all the objects to meshes. I wrote a program to 
locate the objects, more than 51,000, on the height field.  
The program, inspired by the Genesis Tool Kit, can place multiple 
objects and has a function to not place objects on steep slopes. 
When I finish it, I will make the program available for download 
on my POV web site.  I used Jaime Vives Piqueres simple "stacked 
planes of clouds" trick to create the sky.  Media was used for 
the smoke at the top of the pyramid.  Ground fog was added to 
give depth to the image.  The landscape in the background is a 
tiled randomly rotated height field.  To save space, I have 
included only the "inc" file for placing the houses around the lake.

Well, that's about it.  Good luck to all.

