EMAIL: gjv@gvass.demon.co.uk
NAME:  Garry J. Vass
TOPIC: Magic
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE:  Camelot
WEBPAGE:  None
COUNTRY:  England
RENDERER USED: POV 3
TOOLS USED:  Personal software
RENDER TIME:  about 24 hours
HARDWARE USED:  166 pentium
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

This image is called, "Camelot".  A legendary castle built
with Druid magic.  "Camelot" is also the name of England's
National Lottery.  The image also contains a spectacular 
Grail.  Legend tells us that the Grail had magical powers.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

Magic?  The real magic here is that I haven't been fired for 
doodling around in POVRAY so much!

I started out to depict the magic garden in the second act of 
Wagner's opera, "Parifal".  Probably a good theme, and I hope 
somebody submits such a rendering.  But I have to spend some 
more time with the plants and textures.

Then I thought about a scene from Goethe's, "Sorcerer's Apprentice",
dancing brooms and what not.  But I couldn't find the muse.  Here
again, I hope somebody else does it.

And, so I started work on Camelot.  But was does a magic castle 
look like?  Well, there is no drawbridge, no portculis, and
no archery battlements because a magic castle doesn't need things 
like that.  And Druids who could control construction magic wouldn't 
be satisfied to use ordinary stone, rather, they would apply powers 
of Druidic alchemy and create gold.  

So I opted to depict the moment that Camelot was made...  Imagine a 
group  of, say, a dozen Level 16 Mages decked out with amulets, 
artifacts, magic staves, and the other accoutrements of the trade.  

They gathered together at the banks of the Cam River (some say Avalon, 
some say Glastonbury, etc) and drew up the plans.  Inspired by the 
Stonehenge, they wanted something like that, but a whole lot more
awesome.  So after much discussion, they settled on the design you see in 
my rendering.  

They unified their magic and cast one mother of a spell.  They called 
the gold forth from the earth and commanded it to build a castle.

Cripes!  And what would that look like?  Well, imagine that the 
Druids called up a mass of gold, swirling about its center.  It would 
have been shaped with an outward spiral.  It would have had the properties 
of a mist, but would have appeared solid.

At the center of the spiral, the gold would be condensing to form 
the castle superstructure.  A central tower surrounded by twelve 
outlying towers.  Each tower having five buttresses.  Why twelve 
and five?  Twelve seems natural.  And any more than five buttresses 
would have been gaudy (g).  

They thought about designing a rainbow bridge leading up to the 
castle gates, but abandonned the idea when it was pointed out to 
them that the Scandics had already done that when the earth was 
formed.

Therewith you have "Camelot".  The Druids were content and hustled 
off to the rubadub.  But I needed to give the image some narrative 
content.  

So I hit on the idea of of the "Grail".  And rendering the Grail 
into the image was tricky business.  Damned tricky.

The "Grail" was supposedly brought to Britain by Nicodemus, and 
the "Grail" tradition became ensnarled in the whole Arthurian legend.  
Several credible theories exist that intend to explain the "Grail" legend 
in a historical context.  Indeed, several credible theories intend to 
explain Arthur as a war lord with knowledge of Roman cavalry tactics.  But 
I digress.

But on the other hand, if you have read this far...

So the "Grail" was burned in by reflections from the towers.  Like I 
said, it was tricky, and took a lot of trial and error, and having 
to recast the towers several times to make the effect work.  And 
because it is a reflection, POV has to be turned up to Q9 with 
AA at 7.  Not exactly the most expedient settings for trial and 
error.

After a while, I got the effect and felt satisfied with the rendering.

What?  You didn't notice the "Grail"???  Orient your viewer at or near 
pixel x=400, y=400 and Zoom.  You will see it there in all its glory.
It looks like a fluted glass.  The IRTC requires that images be less 
than 250K, and some of its brilliance was lost in the JPEG compression 
process.  But the result is satisfactory nonetheless.

The POV source is in the ZIP for those interested.  I'm sorry it's 
such a mess, but it should render in POV 3 right out of the box.

NOTE ON PERSONAL TOOLS:

I wrote some programs in "C" language that output programs in 
"POV" language.  I put them in the Public Domain and they can be 
had at "go povray".