EMAIL: 	 oyume@gold.ocn.ne.jp
NAME: 	 Jeffrey D. Shaffer
TOPIC: 	 Imaginary Worlds
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION 	   	   COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: 	 My Japan
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: http://www.pitt.edu/~oyume
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.1a
TOOLS USED: 
	- MORAY 3.0:
	    - modeling
	- PhotoStudio 2.0: 
	    - create source files for heightfields
	    - convert to JPG
	    - add text
RENDER TIME: about one hour
HARDWARE USED: Intel 233MMX

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
        I moved to Japan last July from the East Coast of the US to     teach English in a small village called Soni. Soni is at the     outskirts of Nara Prefecture which is in the middle of Japan's     main Island. I'm about 2 hrs from Osaka.
        I was working on a computer movie about my village when it     struck me what MY imaginary world really is -- JAPAN! I have     worked for about 1 year to be able to move to Japan, not     including all the time spent in college studying the language.     Being here is like being in a dream and therefore, my imaginary     world. Japan, MINE!
        The image basically shows japan with my Prefecture     highlighted (but it's a little small!) So there's also a larger     version of my prefecture made of glass on the right. 

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

        The hardest part about this image was making the the maps of     Japan and Nara Prefecture. I actually took digital pictures of     maps I already had (Japan came from my College Japanese book and     Nara came from the "Nara Living Guide" someone gave me when I     1st came here.)
	After I took the pictures, I had to paste them all together     (each map was made from 3 pictures.) Then I hand edited them to     clean up the lines and mistakes, then ran them through several     changes in Contrast and brightness. And finally I ran tem     through a threshold filter which made them flat B&W.
	Now I had straight B&W files, I could import them into a     heightfield in Moray, where the rest involved placing the pieces     together and being patient while the rendered kept track of     three 1000X1000 pixel TGA imagemaps.
	All the files are included in the ZIP. Feel free to use any     of them, including the maps. (I spent about 1 1/2 hrs on each     map!)