EMAIL: rclee@oklahoma.net
NAME: Robert Lee
TOPIC: Spectacular Landscapes
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD
RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Beans
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: None
RENDERER USED: POV 3.5
TOOLS USED: World Maker, IfranView, Little Gray Cells
RENDER TIME: about 4 days
HARDWARE USED: 500 Mhz Pentium on Windows 98,
1.7 Mhz Pentium on Win XP, and 2.4 Mhz Pentium on Win
2000.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: In a magic land, Jack climbed the
beanstalk and discovered the giant's castle.

Soon after the topic was announced I was inspired after
watching "Mickey and the Beanstalk".  This isn't exactly
"Happy Valley" but I was also motivated by Lord of the
Rings.

I wanted to include mountains, rivers, trees, wide open
spaces, an evening star and, of course, beautiful clouds. I
was tempted to eliminate the beanstalk and castle, but
decided that they added an extra element of fantasy to a
picture that was becoming a fantastic landscape. 

Note that the source of the magic beans comes from the river
in the foreground as bushes with similar leaves as the stalk
grow near the water.  

Building on the fantasy element, I departed from realistic
lighting to color the clouds with a sunset color and added
extra strong moonlight to this early evening scene.   In this
mystical land everything glows with magic. 

This is the second scene I've created with POV and I am
pleased with the results.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

Terrain:  I started with some mountains made with World
Maker and placed them in the background.  Since the sky
was so dark and the light source was behind the mountains, I
needed a special light to make the mountains brighter. I
created a light group with a light source and the mountains
to brighten them a bit.  I wanted the "Misty Mountains" to be
majestic in the far distance with the foreground dominated by
an open space, a plane, covered with grass.  Thanks to
RUNE S. JOHANSEN, http://runevision.com/3d/include/include.asp, 
I could have some grass that did not take forever to render.

River: The plane was covered with grass, but it was also
specially prepared for the river.  An array was defined to
hold points along a sphere sweep, their radii, and an off set
value that would be used to create the river bank.  The river
sphere sweep object with radi + the offset value was
subtracted from the grass plane so that a second plane below,
textured as a river bed of rocks, could be seen when the river
was filled with water.  Next a river bank was created by
subtracting the river sphere sweep object from the sphere
sweep object that had the offset values added, leaving the
area defined by the offset radii textured as the river bank. 
The river bank sphere sweep object was then scaled to be
very small in the Y direction so that it was flat against the
grass plane.  The river sphere sweep object, smaller than the
river bank, was added back in, scaled to be thin in the Y
direction, and filled with water material.  In the end, the river
had a bank, water, and the river bed could be seen through
the water.  Thanks to Christoph Hormann's water tutorial on
the web, I was able to develop some acceptable looking
water.

Stalk:  The bean stalk was generated using a primary sphere
sweep object and then wrapping 3 more sphere sweep
objects with randomized connection points around the
primary.  The stalk was textured and the leaves were added.
The leaves are a surface of revolution to generate a 3D pod
like shape.  There are 330 leaves distributed up and down the
stalk.

Houses:  These structures are simple CSG objects made up
of boxes for the walls and chimney.  A door and window are
cut out of the walls, a wooden door is added.  The roof, flat
boxes rotated at an angle, is supported with a triangular
prism object to fill in the space between the walls and the
roof. The walls are textured with a crackle pattern to
simulate stones.  The roof consists of a thatch texture I
found on the Internet.  A light source was added to each
house to suggest human occupation.

Road: The road object is a sphere sweep object squashed by
scaling the Y direction very small so that it lies flat against
the grassy plane.

Castle:  The castle is a simple CSG object made up of boxes,
a cylinder, disc, and a cone.  The castle was given a high
ambient value so that it would be very bright accentuating its
magical quality.

Foliage: There are 2 kinds of bushes.  One that looks like
grass made up of individual sphere sweep objects rotated
randomly around X, Y, and Z, and translated in the Y
direction.  A second bush type is made up of the same 
leaves as are on the bean stalk.  Bushes were placed around
the houses and randomly placed in an area beyond the houses
to show a change in foliage from field, to bushes, to hills and
mountains in the distance.

Trees:  Thanks to TOM AUST, I was able to place 2
beautiful birch trees in the foreground using his Tom Tree
code.

Rocks and River Grass: Rocks were generated using
superellipsoids and sinking them so they would be part in and
part out of the water.  The river grass is the same object used
in the grass bushes.  The rocks and grass were placed
along and in the river using the river sphere sweep points. 
The objects had to be scaled with distance from the camera
so that the farther objects could be seen more clearly.

Evening Star:  Thanks to CHRIS COLEFAX, I could place a
story book evening star in the upper left.

Clouds: Being a meteorologist, I wanted the clouds to look
right.  I started with a box and filled it with scattering and
absorbing media.  The light source was set low to the
horizon and colored to get that great pinkish light.  The
media was given a density with a planar form, a little
turbulence was added, and a color map was applied to
achieve the results shown in the picture. The base of the box
was too flat so I experimented with translucent spheres filled
with media to create a variable cloud base.  In the end I used
a thin  isosurface box, filled with media,  perturbed with
f_noise3d.

Fog:  Some fog was added to give a feeling of mystery and
magic.

Lighting: There is one point source light colored pink to light
up the clouds positioned close to the far horizon.  There is
another light source behind the clouds that part of a light
group with the mountains to make them a bit brighter. 
Media interaction and attenuation were turned on. There is
another light source high above the clouds and toward the
mountains to light the ground and make shadows on the
ground.

Program Structure: I have a main module that displays and
places the main objects. I prefer this construction so that I
can selectively display or not display various objects as the
scene develops. The object details are defined in several
include files.  I've cleaned up the code of comments, but left
the radiosity and suntype switch statements in.  These were
handy when trying out different lighting schemes without
having to redo them every time I changed my mind.

Radiosity: I used medium quality radiocity settings:                
        pretrace_start 0.08
        pretrace_end   0.01
        count 120
        error_bound 0.25
        recursion_limit 1
        brightness 3
        media on
        normal on 
        always_sample on

If you have read this long explanation, congratulations for
sticking with it. I continue to learn more and more with each
effort.  I hope I can pass on a little of what I have learned.