TITLE: The Mage's Room
NAME: Stephen M. Farrell
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: StephenF@whoever.com
WEBPAGE: n/a
TOPIC: Fantasy/Mystic
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: mageroom.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray for Windows 3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    POV-Ray for Windows 3.1; Paint Shop Pro 6.02 (for jpg conversion,
signature, and brightness adjustment).

RENDER TIME: 
    Approx. 10 1/2 hrs.

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium II 266; 384 mb RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

  What would a fantasy novel be without a mage?  And what would a mage be
without a dark, gloomy workroom in which to hone his craft?  Here, the hero of
our story arrives at the mage's workroom, looking to acquire his services, only
to find the mage missing in action....


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

  (Viewing Note:  This scene is intended to be rather dark... the books on the
top shelf of the tallest bookcase should be just discernable.  I'm not sure how
it will look on different monitors under different lighting conditions
(although I did a brightness adjustment in Paint Shop Pro to try to compensate,
allowable under the rules (section 5, subsection f, subsection iii)).  Please
feel free to adjust the gamma/brightness to suit your viewing conditions if
necessary.)

  Nothing overly complicated here... I wanted to get back to basics this time
around.  Mainly a mix of CSG and lathes (lots of lathes here... the goblet,
hourglass, candlestick, flasks, and the posts of the book stand are all
lathes.)  The bookcases took more work and time than anything else in the
scene... although constructed from simple CSG, the placement of the books took
quite a while.  I used while loops to place them, using a series of switch
statements to dictate the position, and much use of random to determine the
book color, height, and the size, color, and position of the title on the
spine.

  The candle turned out well, I think.  The candlestick is a lathe, while the
candle itself is made of blobs, with spherical components placed in a
triangular configuration, which is then rotated upward in a spiral, and then
four copies of that are rotated around the y axis to make the finished product.
 The wick is a simple blob object, and the flame of course is simple media.

  Speaking of media... I need some way to light the middle ground of the scene,
and tried to create some spheres of glowing, coalescing magical energy. 
Unfortunately, I don't think they turned out very well.  I haven't had much
experience with media, since I just don't have the patience to work with it on
my current system.

  Let's see... the floor pattern is made of triangles, placed using while loops.
 And the jar of eyeballs uses the looks_like property to make some of them
glow, using randomness to determine which ones are lit.

  That's about it for this time around.  I had a lot of fun making this scene,
and hope you enjoy it.  Comments/constructive criticism definitely appreciated!