TITLE: Excalibur
NAME: John Gardiner
COUNTRY: UK
EMAIL: john@greenbaize.demon.co.uk
WEBPAGE: www.greenbaize.demon.co.uk
TOPIC: Warfare
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: excalibu.jpg
ZIPFILE: excalibu.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POVRAY 3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    Painter Classic to create a seamless image of stone walling

RENDER TIME: 
    20 mins at 1024 x 768

HARDWARE USED: 
    PC 800 mhz processor 128 Mbytes RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Oh dear - this is my first IRTC entry and I've just read some of the comments
for the last topic "not another sword in a stone"!

I drew this after visiting Tintagel Castle in Cornwall where the Excalibur story
begins. It's a beautiful but bleak and craggy coast, and there was a dark,
threatening sky. I stood and imagined how cold and hard King Arthur's wars must
have been. I came home and wanted to try to capture that feeling.

This is my second POVRAY image. I didn't draw it for the competition, but now
it's finished I want to enter it. For me, it's everything about war.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


For the castle's stonework I took a photo of some stone walling and converted it
to a seamless image. When I first rendered the castle you could see the pattern
repeating so I mixed it up a little using bozo.

The real sword is believed to have had a dragon engraved on the blade - I used
the dragon from a Welsh pound coin (which seemed appropriately Celtic).

The sword's hilt is a bit too detailed for a 1024 jpeg but I really drew the
picture to print - I find the images much more satisfying hanging on my wall
than on my PC screen. I render at 3072 x 2304 and then take a zip disc to the
local photoshop for a 12x16 inch print. 

The source code is not pretty! I am still coming to terms with POVRAY and most
of the picture is a result of experimenting until getting the desired effect.