TITLE: Non nobis sed Tibi Domine
NAME: Maurizio Tomasi
COUNTRY: Italy
EMAIL: zio_tom78@hotmail.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/zio_tom78
TOPIC: Architecture
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: mtdomine.jpg
ZIPFILE: mtdomine.zip
RENDERER USED: 


    POV-Ray 3.5 for Windows



TOOLS USED: 


- Paint Shop Pro 7.0 (height field creation, title, JPEG conversion)

- sPatch 1.5 (the two statues)



RENDER TIME: 


Statistics for mtdomine.pov, Resolution 768 x 768
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Time For Parse:    0 hours  0 minutes  56.0 seconds (56 seconds)
Time For Trace:    2 hours  8 minutes  49.0 seconds (7648 seconds)
    Total Time:    2 hours  8 minutes  24.0 seconds (7704 seconds)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    

HARDWARE USED: 


        AMD Athlon 1000 Mhz with 128 MB RAM.



IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


      This is a view of the Duomo of Milan (Italy), the biggest gothic
church in the World.  It was built over an ancient church (early
Middle Ages; about V century, I think) whose ruins are still visible
in the cellars of the Duomo.  The image shows the top of the apse; the
camera is placed about 60 meters above the ground (as a reference, the
dome is about 110 meters high).  The ladder on the top left was added
in the XX century to let the visitors to reach the roof of the Duomo
and admire the landscape.

      The title I chose for the image, "Non nobis sed Tibi Domine"
("it is not for us but for You, God"), was an expression used in the
Middle Ages during the consacration of new churches and cathedrals.
People in the Middle Ages had a strong piety, and these giant
buildings, where almost every architectonic element and decoration
points towards the Sky, were without doubt an act of true and deep
devotion (I've read that merchants dragged carts full of heavy stones
to the Chatedral of Chartres like horses, and after their arrival they
praised a monk to flog them in order to make amends for their sins).
It was this extraordinary religiousness which made possible the
building of such architectonic masterpieces.

      The Duomo is one of the strangest historical buildings in
Europe: its building took more than five (5!) centuries.  They started
in 1385 (constitution of the "fabrica ambrosiana", the corporation
which directed the construction; the name comes from St. Ambrosius,
patron of Milan), while the most recent part of the Dome, the front,
was started in 1889 and completed in 1965, when the last brass door
was added.  This happened because of many reasons: changes in the
citizens' taste (e.g. the gothic decorations were heavily criticized
during the XVII century), lack of money (expecially during wars and
famines), the many polytical vicissitudes of the dukedom of Milan,
which was dominated by the Viscontis (1395-1450), Sforzas (1450-1535),
Kingdom of Spain (1535-1706), Austrian Empire (1706-1797), Napoleon I
(1797-1805), Kingdom of Italy (1805-1814), and the Austrian Empire
again (1814-1859).  Perhaps this is the reason why we finished it only
after the reunification of Italy! (1861).

      Today the Duomo is complete (even if it lacks the bell tower),
and can be judged for what it is: an astonishing "museum in the open
air".  Many famous italian artists gave their contribution to the
Duomo: the most notable were Giovannino de'Grassi, Bramante, Francesco
di Giorgio and Leonardo da Vinci (which sketched some plans for the
dome).  We do not know however who was the planner.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


      I must admit this was a *very* difficult image to model!  The
color of the Duomo was a big question.  Its shade is very uniform: the
same kind of stone (a kind of granite) was probably used both for
bricks and statues; if I had followed this rule in the model, the
raytraced image would have had been quite monotonous.  So I used
shadows and "fake" colors (e.g. bricks) in order to increase the
interest.  I am not able to decide if this is enough or not: after
having worked for so many days on the image, *everything* seems
monotonous to me now!

      I was really pleased while modeling the various decorations, but
placing them in the right place was a very boring job!  The basic
shapes used in the creation of this image are height fields (arches
and the window frame), blobs (various decorations), sphere sweeps,
Julia fractals (can you find them?) and CSG objects.  The two statues
were made with sPatch.  Some notes:

- The oblique part of the transversal wall was modeled with CSG and
  shear transformations.  Decorations are placed without using
  shearing.

- The window glass is a CSG shape made by a box and two intersecting
  cylinders (this caused me more than an headache; there is something
  strange in POV when using cylinders in CSG!).  This shape was used
  also in a CSG difference with the wall with decorations.  I had to
  avoid any intersection with the arches: being HFs, the subtraction
  would have led to strange artifacts.

- The buildings reflected in the window are simple gray boxes.  I
  chose a light color for them in order to leave the reflected arches
  visible (*slightly* visible: they originate the black shadow on the
  bottom left of the window).

- Bricks are simple boxes placed by a macro.  Texture is randomly
  chosen for each of them.  Note that the real bricks are not so pink:
  their color is almost exactly like the one I've used for the arches.

- The ladder (on the top left of the image) is made by cylinders and
  boxes.

The zip file contains a large-sized image (2048x2048).

Maurizio Tomasi

