EMAIL: pbjunk@wowway.com

NAME: Phil Brewer

TOPIC: From Rubbage Bin to Junkyard

COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.

TITLE: Quincy

COUNTRY: US

RENDERER USED: PovRay 3.6

TOOLS USED:

  XFrog for tree and plant models
  Rhino 3D for file conversion
  Paint Shop Pro X for heightfield tweaking, some textures, and conversion to jpeg
  Gilles Tran's MakeCloud macros
  GForge and HF-lab for heightfield generation and tweaking
  PM 2Ring's catenary macro
  
RENDER TIME: Parse time: 1h 47m, Render time: 35h 57m

HARDWARE USED: AMD 64 3200+ (2.0GHz), 2GB RAM, WinXP

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

  The Quincy Mine #2 Shafthouse. Located in Hancock, MI, the Quincy #2 is just
  one of many mine relics left over from the Keweenaw's copper boom during the
  early 1900's. Now, with the rare exception of a few sites maintained by historical
  organizations, the leftovers of the Keweenaw's mining operations only exist as
  junk littering the countryside.


  The Keweenaw Peninsula is about 1000 square miles (2500 quare km) of land jutting
  into Lake Superior on the very northern edge of Michigan's upper peninsula. In 
  1840-1841 the land was surveyed by Douglass Houghton who reported large mineral
  deposits, especially copper. Congress purchased the land from the Chippewa tribe
  of Native Americans in 1842 and re-sold it to the public. During the next 20 years, 
  94 mining companies operated in the area. Of the 94, only 8 were profitable. Between 
  1845 and 1925, 7.5 billion pounds of ingot copper were taken from the Keweenaw. By
  around 1930, the price of copper had fallen to the point where it was no longer
  profitable to run the mines. They experienced a brief re-opening during WWII, but
  then closed for good.

  The Quincy Mining Company was formed in 1846. Quincy was one of the more profitable
  companies and provided dividends to stockholders from 1867 through 1921. This led
  to the company being known as "old reliable". The #2 Shafthouse pictured is located
  in Hancock, MI. The steam hoist used to lower and raise workers and materials into
  the mine is the largest steam-powered hoist engine ever built and reached a depth of 
  over 9000 feet (2700 m). It could lift 10 tons (9 metric tons) of rock from the mine at 
  a speed of 36mph (60 kph). The shafthouse building, along with the hoisthouse, steam 
  hoist and surrounding properties are now maintained by the Quincy Mine Hoist 
  Association, a non-profit organization created to preserve Quincy's history and the 
  steam hoist.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
  
  The main objects in the scene (two buildings and framework) were based off of some 
  pictures I took, as well as reference pictures I found online. I was also able to 
  find some mechanical drawings in the library of congress archives that I could scale 
  off of for dimensions. Those were a huge help.

  // Shafthouse //

  The Shafthouse (grey steel-sided building) is all CSG construction.
  
  The main texture uses a normal for the corrugation, with an overlaying image_map to 
  add some light rust. I then used a greyscale image as an image pattern with several 
  copies of the base texture to break up the colors and patterns to give it a 
  "patchwork" look.

  The rust texture on the framework and giant steel "cylinder" are procedural textures.
  Just a lot of playing around with the colors and patterns.
  
  The texture on the concrete base under the giant steel "cylinder" is mainly an image
  map, but with an underlying procedural base and normal.

  The windows are created with a macro that randomly leaves out panes of glass to make 
  them look broken. The glass texture is reflective, but with a hazy film over some of 
  the surface to make it look dirty and weathered.

  // Cable Support //

  The large steel framework was used to support the hoist cable between the shafthouse
  and hoisthouse. It is modeled with CSG with the help of PM 2Ring's catenary macro to
  drape cables between points. I tried writing my own macro to use sphere_sweeps on a
  parabolic shape, but it didn't look nearly as good. I used macros for some of the more 
  repetetive CSG tasks.

  The texture is the same procedural texture used on the framework attached to the
  shafthouse. 

  // Old Hoisthouse //

  The stone building next to the shafthouse is an older hoisthouse. It held one of the
  earlier hoists (as the mine went deeper, equipment was constantly upgraded).

  The stone walls are created with a macro I wrote. It uses an image as a mask and 
  places isosurface blocks in a series of steps on the wall. The first step creates
  large blocks randomly around the wall. The second step fills in the remaining gaps
  so the wall is mostly full. I use an array to keep track of what areas are occupied
  and what areas off-limits (from the mask). It's not a very elegant macro, but it 
  works.

  A heightfield fills in the mortar gaps.

  The roof is a prism using some of the same texture from the shafthouse. The large rust
  area is an image map.

  // Ground //

  The ground consists of two heightfields. One close to the camera and one further away.
  The heightfields were tweaked in Paint Shop Pro to mask off areas not seen (helps once
  we get to plants).

  The trees and plants are Xfrog models. They're randomly placed with an eval_pigment
  function and some images giving me some more control. There are two types of tree models,
  one bush model, one grass model, and two flower models.

  // Misc //

  The sky is a sky_sphere with a couple of Gilles Tran's media clouds scaled very large
  to turn them into cirrus clouds.

  The power lines in the background are created with a simple macro, and I use the 
  catenary macro once again for the power cables.

  The rail cars are CSG, with a chain created with the catenary macro. Rocks on them are
  isosurfaces randomly placed.

  The hawk in the sky is just an image map on a box. Created from a picture I took.

  The pile of poor rock in the background is a coarse mesh from Rhino peppered with 
  isosurface boulders.

  The skip (ore bucket) in the foreground is also CSG. The texture is the same used on
  the two pieces of framework, but you can see some of the detail this close up.

  Lighting is from one parallel light source acting as the sun. Radiosity fills in the 
  blanks.

  There is a very minor ground fog to mimic atmospheric haze.

  I used some minor focal blur to give the image some depth.

  I've included a source zip (minus most images and meshes due to size). I apologize in
  advance that the code isn't very clean.














