TITLE: From a Raft
NAME: Teddy Nishiyama
COUNTRY: Japan
EMAIL: tnishi@ari.ncl.omron.co.jp
TOPIC: nature
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: raft.jpg
ZIPFILE: raft.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray for Windows 3

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray, PovWin, Paintshop Pro

RENDER TIME: 
    about 1 hour

HARDWARE USED: 
    P-5 120

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

        A view of a sunset over an island as seen from a drifting
        raft.  Inspired by a friend who just returned from a 10
        day trip overseas to photograph nature scenes.  

        I also kind of imagined Huckleberry Finn on a much larger
        scale...he just went down the river, but this Huck Finn
        traveled the ocean in a raft! :p


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


        Basic objects such as the raft and heightfield for the
        island was done in Moray.  The base image for the 
        heightfield was created using Paintshop Pro by taking
        a very think round brush and drawing a worm shaped 
        squiggle and then drawing a lighter colored and thinner
        line inside the thick squiggle. I then smudged the 
        edges to create a smoother transition between the 
        colors and finally blurred it before reading it into
        Moray.

        I used Moray's texture editor to do the water texture.
        I did several tries before I got a texture that looked
        like real ocean water.

        The sun is just a solid colored center in the color map
        for the sky_sphere.  I had to turn and twist the thing
        so it appeared in the right place and I still don't
        really know how the thing works.  Just trial and error
        for the placing though.

        for effect, I added Chris Colefax's lensflare and it
        turned out to be a pretty nice effect.

        A simple raft was created in Moray and then exported to
        a Pov file, then cut and paste into the main scene, but
        because I had played around with the placement of the
        camera and the sun, etc.  it took me about an hour to
        figure out where my raft was.  It just wouldn't show
        up.  I finally figured out where it was (it was behind
        the camera!) and got it placed so that it could be seen.