EMAIL: hgregory3@aol.com
NAME: Hugh S. Gregory
TOPIC: Fortress
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: 1st_Fort
COUNTRY: CANADA
WEBPAGE:
RENDERER USED: Povray 3.1
TOOLS USED: Moray 3.1, Leveler Demo, sPatch, 3D Win, Paintshop Pro Demo
Plant Studio
RENDER TIME: 16 minutes
HARDWARE USED: PentiumII 350Mhz, 196megs RAM
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
Cast your mind back several centuries, back to the time when safety for
a individual was perilous and the only way to protect yourself, your
family and friends was to erect stout walls and line them with cannons
and heavily armed soldiers.
Not just any location is suitable for such a redoubt. Up in the
highlands of Scotland one can find many such places that are well
sited for defence and at the same time well suited for self
supporting agriculture. There are also several that are located on
islands in the Lochs or in river estuaries.
Thus, the best way to give pause to any potential invader was to locate
your Fortress on such an island. With only one possible land approach
that ends at a drawbridge.
So what you shall see in this month's entry is the view that would
confront any traveller who has climbed far into the highlands and
through the mountain passes to arrive at your home.
Around the lake they would see crops in the fields that support your
household, and not so pleasing to behold, a long winding walkway out
into the lake, upon which your weapons can be easily be brought to bear.
This would discourage the most uncouth of the vile barbarians, who may
take it into their fancy to try and "visit" you.
To you it is a grand but secure home for you, your family and your
retainers. But anyone clearing the mountain passes to descend into
your valley, what confronts them is the heavily guarded "1st_Fort".
DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
This is my second solo IRTC entry. With the exceptions noted below
(where my wife assisted me), all structures and features in this image
were built and artistically placed in this image by myself.
When the topic was announced in the 1st week of March, memories of our
trip through the Scottish highlands back in '95 quickly gave me the
inspiration for interpreting this months theme of "Fortress".
Stage 1:
Again I chose the two stage approach. First I built the fort. Then
I built and incorporated the surrounding landscape and vegetation.
The Fort was built with CSG's and primitives to come up with a double
rampart design (out and inner walls), along with corner turrets, complete
with arrow slit windows.
Then I spent about a week playing with various textures to try and get
the brick work to look "just so". My wife had found and downloaded a
lovely texture called "Paver" off an internet site (www.axem2.simplenet)
which unfortunately is no longer up. However, I wish to give thanks to the
designer of this wonderful texture for having made it available for others
to use. Full credit for this texture goes to its designer who posted it
to www.axem2.simplenet
Stage 2:
Next came an Island upon which to rest my fortress and the approach
causeway both of which I built in Leveller. Here another texture that
my wife found crusing the internet was put to use. I wish to thank and
give full credit to Charles Fusner, for it was he who designed the Moray
compatible texture "Rough Stone" that I have used for my island and the
causeway leading out to the island.
My wife Anne then designed and built in Leveller, the rolling hills and
mountains you see in the background of the shot. She also designed the
Bullrushes you see in the water, lilypads and the plants along side the
foot path just in front of the camera view. The bullrushes and lilypads
are imported from our joint IRTC entry "Deer Lake" from last years
Wilderness theme entry.
I then built with primitive cubes and cylinders the boardwalk that sits
astride of the causeway and designed and built the cannons. Each plank
along the walkway was rotated and redimensioned so that the texture my
wife made would not appear to be a series of "photocopies". Next I
borrowed with her permission, one of my wifes "Tourist's" from her Blue
Mosque entry to the last IRTC still comp and modified it into soldiers
and artillery men for my fort's ramparts, complete with faces, helmets,
pikes and ramming rods.
Next I experimented with various textures to get the "right look" for the
backgrounds green crop covered foreground hills and for the more distant
higher mountains a scrub covered ground texture. Here I textured the
low hills ringing the lake with a mottled look and then installed 4 rows
of tall plants along the lake shore, which when distant viewed cleverly
deceives the eye into thinking that it is looking at rows and rows of
planted fields.
With these installed I began "flying" a camera around the 1st_Fort, doing
many test renders to find the best place to "shoot" my image from.
I finally settled on a view from the south looking north along the causeway
with the Sun high over and behind the right shoulder of the camera view to
produce an early morning point of view.
To complete the image, I made my sky from a squashed sphere, scaled up to
8000 by 8000 by 3000 high. Into this I inserted a plane at about 500 units
up to make the low lying layer of clouds. The water texture is a Moray
texture "Quiet Water". This I put on a group that contained a stretched
and flattened cube for my lake's surface.
The 800 by 600 BMP took over 16 minutes to render on POV using my Pentium
II - 350. The resulting BMP was converted into a JPG with a Demo version
of Paint Shop Pro Anne downloaded off the internet set to 5% compression
to get the image file down under the IRTC 250kb maximum size. Although
there is no longer a image image size limitation, my experience in judging
previous rounds has led me to conclude that 800 by 600 does make for ease
in displaying the IRTC artwork for examination, so I have decided to stick
with the 800 by 600 image size.
I Submit To The Standard Raytracing Competition Copyright
"1st_Fort" is
Copyright(c)2001, Hugh S. Gregory, All Rights Reserved World Wide.