EMAIL: gmccarter@hotmail.com NAME: Glenn McCarter TOPIC: Warfare COPYRIGHT: I submit to the standard raytracing competition copyright. TITLE: "Valley of the Shadow" COUNTRY: USA WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/gmccarter/Shadow RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.5 beta TOOLS USED: POV-Ray editor Pencil & paper (lathes & splines) hamaPatch ( various patch objects ) ColorPicker ( define RGB colors ) TomTree include file Paint Shop Pro ( heightfields, convert image to JPEG, add copyright ) RENDER MUSIC: Yes, "Yours is no Disgrace" RENDER TIME: 6h 38m HARDWARE USED: Pentium III - 800 mhz IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hours after the ambush, a soldier pauses to rest. The last of his buddies are buried now. He needs to take shelter soon, although the enemy is still nearby. It's going to be a long, cold night. VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: Please try to view this image in a darkened environment to see maximum detail of this night-time scene. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: This is my 15th entry into the IRTC. Some images begin as a detailed vision but become difficult to execute. This one was nearly the opposite -- a simple idea that flowed and expanded as I developed it. The initial idea was just this: a night scene with a soldier pausing over a freshly-dug grave, with dogtags visible in the foreground. That's it. Everything else was added to enhance this setup. Composition ----------- Because this is nearly four scenes in one (foreground, soldier, road, and background) I took special care in composition and lighting to bring the elements together, including using a very limited color palette. This was not originally intended to be a winter scene. But early in the scene development, I added snow to the ground, and liked the contrasts. Plenty of diagonal lines in the scene keep the composition lively. Lighting -------- There are eight light sources, in addition to the flashlight. Each zone of the scene has at least one main spotlight, coming from a plausible source, such as the moon or a nearby building or vehicle. Some of the lights are area_lights to soften shadows. Everything is divided into light groups, which significantly speeds rendering time. The only global light source here is the moon. Modeling -------- The soldier is upgrade of my "blobman" figure used in a few previous scenes. The terrain is a series of height_fields made in Paint Shop Pro, some with an image_map added. The original images have up to six layers to create features such as tire tracks and material maps. The bridge is a single-span, wrought iron, pin-connected Pratt-type CSG truss bridge supported by stone abutments. The "deuce-and-a-half" truck is CSG steel and rubber blobs, with a cab mangled in hamaPatch and media smoke. The dogtags are height_fields, based on scans of actual dogtags. The rifle is a Springfield M1 Garand, a mix of primitives and patch elements. The wood box is made of a bunch of height_fields, mostly. The map was folded in hamaPatch, and has a scan of an actual tactical map. The building is a whole lot of Constructive (and Destructive) Solid Geometry. All the source files necessary to re-create the image are included in the zip file. I hand-coded roughly 3,000 lines to produce this scene, which doesn't count the patches and image files. I used several new POV-Ray 3.5 features in the scene: sphere_sweeps and splines, functions and isosurfaces, trace() and light_groups. For more information on the making of this image, please visit http://www.geocities.com/gmccarter/Shadow. I enjoyed creating this image. I hope you enjoy viewing and commenting on it. Thanks to --------- http://www.astory.com/deuce/ -- for great photos of military trucks. Ebay sellers -- for photo reference for several items modeled in the scene. Reusser and Michael Zier -- for gaussian distribution methods. And a big thanks to the POV-Team for improving what was already the best free renderer on the planet!