TITLE: Lost hopes
NAME: Nicholas Sibille Tift
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: nicksibille@warpmail.net
WEBPAGE: www.geocities.com/nicksibille
TOPIC: Desert
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: nst_hope.jpg
ZIPFILE: nst_hope.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV Ray 3.6 (for Windows)

TOOLS USED: 
    Gimp 2.0, POV Ray 3.6

RENDER TIME: 
    4hrs 12min 26sec

HARDWARE USED: 
    2.667 GHz P4, 640 Mb RAM (DDR 266 MHz)

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


I hope.
I hoped sometime ago to be able to learn how to use POV.
I hoped that my inexperience would not be a handicap.
And once I read which would be this round_s topic, I thought _how could I do
something that was up to it? How could I compete?_ Then I realized that
technical prowess is not all, that the image itself had to convey something,
and that something could be told without that much to do.
Then I thought _what does Desert mean to you (me)?_ and there it was: the usual
images of desolation, barren expanses of nothingness and loneliness. 
Nothingness and loneliness, in the face of which we are taught to respond with
courage and hope. Religion has done so throughout the ages, yet in today_s day
and age we feel (at least me) more akin to some lonely shipwreck survivor,
where we are left to cope with pain alone, without the proper framework of
faith and solace that religion used to provide. 
It is in this spirit that I present this image, neither with the intention of
being to grim no in any way blasphemous (nothing is farther from my mind). 
I also sought out the irony in the image, the irony of finding a message in a
bottle a few steps away from a discarded crucifix in the middle of a dried
lake, where once life thrived, now only mute testaments of a past gone for
good, begging the questions: What is written in the message? ; Does it mean
that religion was discarded before seeking help elsewhere? ; Which one carries
more weight? The Community (through religion), or the individual (through the
one lonely cry for help)?  
I hope so much meaning is notice at first sight.
I hope it not to brainy.
I hope you like it.
  

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


-Aspect ratio: Modified standard INI file in order to render using a 1.777
aspect ratio, HDTV.

-Ground: Combination of a CSG object containing a _tiled_ height field
(repeating it towards the horizon) and a infinite plane (repeating the height
field proved too costly for my CPU, decided on combination also due to the fact
that at long distances details will not be so apparent), using a Gimp generated
reference map as template (river2.png); it took some tweaking to calibrate
precisely the right height and depth for the shaded cracks, still could do more
work on it if I had more time. Ground is textured with the agate texture
included as a standard texture insert (win POV Ray 3.6), elevated the
turbulence parameter in order to simulate more real dust/dry mud.

-Bottle: CSG object, using another CSG object for the main body, which contains
a difference between a blob object (two cylinders, corresponding to the lower
body and neck of the bottle) and another identical except in scale (slightly
smaller in order to carve out the bottle_s volume), one difference object
(combining a shallow cone and a shallow cylinder, in order to create the
bottle_s bottom), one torus (bottle_s cap), one cone (cork, uses cork texture
copied directly from _textures.inc_, did not #include in order to be able to
tweak it if necessary without modifying the original file, after all it was not
needed), and another multi-level CSG object (sheet of paper within bottle, the
message). Glass took a long time to perfect (if you can say this is anywhere
near perfect!), includes caustic photons, yet with the radiosity at full
throttle, they_re kind of invisible. All declared as a single object, rotated
and translated for the shot.

-Crucifix: CSG, union of two boxes using T_Wood3 texture from _woods.inc_.
Rotated and translated for shot.

-Atmosphere: Ground fog, yellowish tint to simulate sand in suspension (I mean
flying around due to the wind), added turbulence yet it is not apparent (maybe
I_m doing something wrong_). Sky sphere object, textured with a color map,
blending another yellowish tint and a pale blue.

-Camera: Includes focal blur, kept long distance out of focus for obvious
reasons (well, not so obvious, lack of detail and simulated short distance
photo shoot), short distance blurred in order to _dynamize_ the scene, it felt
too static.

-Lights: Scene includes now only one active light, tried different light
combinations, with multiple sources, yet I was not able to produce any other as
convincing and dramatic as this one.

The image was converted from bmp to jpg using Gimp 2.0.