EMAIL: john@greenbaize.demon.co.uk
NAME: John Gardiner
TOPIC: Warfare
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Excalibur
COUNTRY: UK
WEBPAGE: www.greenbaize.demon.co.uk
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.