EMAIL: irtc_mail@yahoo.co.uk
NAME: Richard Webster
TOPIC: Spectacular Landscapes
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Maid of the Mist
COUNTRY: England
WEBPAGE: None
RENDERER USED: povray 3.5
TOOLS USED: PaintShop Pro for jpeg
RENDER TIME: 6 hours
HARDWARE USED: AMD Duron 1.1GHz 128MB

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

 The Maid of the Mist approaching Horseshoe Falls at Niagara Falls.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

 All modelling was done in code and the full source is in the
 zip file.

 The main objects in the scene are:

  - Falls

    The surface of the falls is made from two meshes generated from
    functions.

    The texture of the near-falls is done by environment-mapping.
    An image-map is rendered into a separate file, then the image
    is uv-mapped onto the mesh using the components of the surface
    normal as the u and v values. This gives a watery look without
    having to spend time on lighting, reflection and refraction.

    The texture of the far falls is a random pattern.

    The spray on the near falls is a blob object with spheres
    following a path down the falls with an increasing random
    spread.

  - Mist

    The whole scene in enclosed in a sphere with media to give haze.

    The mist at the bottom of each of the falls is a row of merged
    spheres containing turbulent media.

  - Lagoon

    The lagoon texture blends between two textures: a white pattern
    with blue patches at the far-falls and a blue pattern with white
    patches near the viewer.

    The ripples around the boat come from a normal-map with a
    cylindrical pattern which reduces the disturbance to the normal
    with increasing distance from the boat.

  - Boat

    The main structure of the boat is a height field rendered into a
    separate file which is used in a CSG with holes cut in the sides
    by boxes.

    The caped people are simple models with a sphere for a head and
    a cone for a body. These are randomly scattered on the decks.