TITLE: Artifacts
NAME: Caleb Hines
COUNTRY: USA

EMAIL: bachmusic1@netscape.net
TOPIC: Minimalism
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: artifacs.jpg
ZIPFILE: artifacs.zip
RENDERER USED: 

   Megapov 1.0


TOOLS USED: 

   GIMP 1.2.0 (on Windows ME) to convert final bmp to jpeg


RENDER TIME: 

   3 minutes, 38 seconds


HARDWARE USED: 

   900 MHz Pentium III


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Mathematical artifacts, relationships that appear to be important but are merely
simple consequences of an underlying pattern. In this case, the apparent
convergence points, which are caused by diagonal rows which exist in the
underlying matrix. Easily seen in this picture are convergence points for
diagonal rows representing the ratios 0:1, 1:1, 3:2, 4:3, 2:1, 3:1, 4:1. Some
of these same ratios can be used to produce harmonic tones in music, and play
important roles in other fields as well. Now they can make pretty artwork too!


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


I had a hard time with the initial concept for this image because I wasn't sure
what minimalism meant, even after reading the articles on wikipedia. I
basically gathered it was a few simple colors and shapes, sometimes repeated.
Big deal. A five year old could do that. At one point I wasn't even intending
to enter this round. But as the topic percolated in my mind, the beginning of
an idea took shape.

My first thought was -- what is the most minimal thing you can do? A blank
picture. Obviously that wouldn't do, so bit by bit, I started adding complexity
to it. Simple shapes? A sphere should do. You want repetition? Sure, lets
layout a plane of spheres. A few vivid colors? Okay, we'll have two planes of
spheres, each a different color, hovering in a field of a third color.

By this point, I had a concept for the basic picture, so I rendered it, and
"discovered" the mathematical "artifacts" that existed along the diagonal rows.
I had forgotten about these until I rendered them, and the effect was so
startlingly cool that I instantly knew that they would be the topic (and title)
of my picture. I was reminded of something I had read on wikipedia that
minimalism involved the "exploration" of space. The artifacts definately fit
that bill. They give the feel of a tunnel, and lead the eye to explore their
distant centers.

Still, what I had was pretty boring from an artistic view. I didn't want to add
anything to the picture, but I had to change something to spice it up. The
first thing I did was tilt the camera and aim it off-center. That instantly
made the picture look more interesting, as it no longer resembled a distant
horizon. It also revealed another major artifact and added a sense of tension
(like things aren't quite balanced). But it still wasn't quite looking
finished, so I added a shiny finish to the spheres and moved the light over to
one side. I experimented with a subtle fog to provide distance fading, but I
had to be very careful to not destroy the balance of colors I had created. I
had thought about adding a second shadowless "fill light" to soften the
shadows, but I realized that the sharpness of the shadows provided another
artistic contrast. I also tried experimenting with radiosity, but it provided
no added benefit to what I was was looking for.

Overall, I'm pleased with the result, and I hope you are too.

Postscript: Unfortunately, the conversion to jpg introduced another type of
artifact, but an undesireable one. Using GIMP to do the conversion instead of
MS Paint helped a bit, but didn't completely erradicate the errant artifacts.
I've included a PNG (also converted with the GIMP) to display the original
clarity of the image.

