TITLE: "Bonsai"

NAME: Kenneth J. Schnardthorst
COUNTRY: United States of America

EMAIL: ezekiel12@aol.com
WEBPAGE: None

TOPIC: Spirit of Asia
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: bonsai.jpg
ZIPFILE: bonsai.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray for Windows v3.1g


TOOLS USED: 
    Splinetree and leafdef includes by Andrew Clinton and MegaPov v0.7
by Nathan Kopp, Lview pro v1b 


RENDER TIME: 
    Time For Parse 0 hours 1 minutes 6.0 seconds (66 seconds)
Time For Trace: 0 hours 27 minutes  40.0 seconds (1660 seconds)
Total Time: 0 hours 28 minutes  46.0 seconds (1726 seconds)


HARDWARE USED: 
    Packard Bell M415 using a 166 MMX pentium w/ 32 megs RAM and a
VooDoo 5500 graphics card w/ 64 megs of RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    The picture is of a Bonsai tree sitting on a wooden floor in
front of two wood and paper screens.  This is my first graphic using only
POV-Ray, I normally use Raydream 3D.  I picked the Bonsai because of it's
simplicity, and because of it's display of strength and serenity.  This is
consistent with the Japanese arts even though they were not the only people to
practice this form of horticulture.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 
    I have been trying to learn how to
use POV-Ray for about six months now, and I pretty much understand some of it's
nuiances though I am far from being a Pro at it.
        I started this image by setting up the standard include files, then by
setting up my camera, lighting, ground plane and background.  The next step was
making my tree.  I like Andrew Clinton's splinetree include file, as it is
pretty straight forward programing and I can get really good results that look
fairly believable.  I spent one day manipulating the numbers in the program
until I got the tree I wanted.  I made the tree structure first to get the
shape right then I added the leaves using the leafdef include file.  These two
files go hand in hand and really work good together.  The only problem I
haven't been able to figure out is how to take other leaf images and give them
a transparent background.
        Next I made a two grid shaped isosurfaces.  This is a function of
MegaPov that I think is interesting, the ability of a mathematical formula to
define a shape.  The first grid was rotated around the x-axis 90 degrees and
positioned behind the tree.  The second grid was rotated around both the x and
y axes by 90 degrees and the placed perpendicular to the first grid.  Both
grids were pigmented with a medium brown color.
        The low pot the tree is in, is another isosurface.  I used standard
coloring with pigment and normal modifiers to give it a texture of glazed
pottery.  The object is centered under the tree object.
        The screens are simple box structures that are pigmented white and
centered within the grid isosurfaces.  There is another box that forms the
corner post, it is pigmented the same color as the grid structures.
        To give the impression of the tree being in soil, I took a simple sphere
and squashed it a little.  I then applied a pebblely looking image map to give
it some texture.  I used the same image as a bump map to enhance the appearance
of the texture.  This actually took me quite a bit of time to figure out as the
POV-Ray help files are not very specific about how to go about doing this,
however once I got the hang of it I was very pleased with the results.
        The last thing I did was change the original ground plane that I started
with into a simple box to make the floor.  Again I used an image map enhanced
with a bump map to provide the texture for the floor.  The image I used is a
nice picture of highly weathered pine boards.
        The design phase of this project took me about five days total. I used
Lview Pro to convert the final image to jpg format and to add the titling.  All
of the images I used along with the actual POV file are in the zip file, I have
also included the splinetree zip archive that I got off of the POV-Ray site.

