EMAIL: lrwii@joplin.com
NAME: Leroy Whetstone
TOPIC: Fire and Ice
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE:Ice Candle
COUNTRY:USA
WEBPAGE:http://leroywhetstone.s5.com 
JPGFILE: Candle.jpg
ZIPFILE: Candle.zip

RENDERER USED:
 Povray 3.6 Windows

TOOLS USED:
 jpeg conversion: Image Force by Cursor Arts Co.
 Triangle meshs: TRIANG by David Sharp
 lathe: SorLaT by me (on my web page)

RENDER TIME:
 Todal: 31 minutes 50 seconds 


HARDWARE USED:
 Anthon 1.2Ghz 256 Meg RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: An Ice Candle, pure fire and ice.
                  It was the frist thing that popped into 
                  my mind when I heard this rounds topic.     

SCENE :
 size: 480 * 580
 antialias: threshold .1 method 2 depth 3

 frame level objects: 21

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

  For this round I wanted to make something look real.
  I thought that the simpler the shapes the more time I've
  have to get the lighting and textures right. It turns out
  I needed all the time I could get.

The Lights: There are 3 light sources one above and the others
          where place to highlight the ice.

The Background: This is where I got into trouble. I had a faint
               simple pattern as a working backgound while I
               was making the flame. The Flame developed specks.
               I worked real hard to get rid of them and I did.
               Then after I ran test, I wanted the background 
               just a tad lighter. So I made ajustments and ran
               again and specks where back. So to hell with the
               background. 
               

 The Flame: It's very hard to made great flame. I used a
           wax candle's flame as a refference. The trouble
           with any flame is the backgound will affect how
           a flame is made. So a flame made for one scene
           doesn't always work for another. I got into 
           trouble of having a good looking flame ruin by
           a small change in the background.
            I used a lathe with multiple media to make 
           this Flame. The First media has several densities
           the other only one. The First Media starts with
           an emission of 1. Most of the densities take away
           from this color. I use the lathe in an object 
           pigment as base density to keep the other densities 
           from hitting the object sides. There are several
           spherical densities placed close to each other to
           hollow out the center, and a gradient density to
           adjust the colors from top to bottom.
            The other media uses negative emission and 
           absorption to add heat waves to the flame.
            The above is the end product of a lot of trial and
           error.I tried DF3, even wrote a c++ program to 
           convert Height feild tgas into DF3 files. It made 
           a fair cartoonish flame, but not what I wanted.

The Candle: I tried using an isosurface CSG with a cone.It was 
           slow and it was hard to get adjusted.
            What I settled on was an CSG of a cone with several
           cylinders and spheres.As I'm writing this I'm still
           adjusting the finish to get that ice look.

The wick: The burning part is made of two Meshs with one scaled 
         a little bigger with a texture that'll show parts of 
         the inner Mesh. The part that is'nt burning is made of
         5 spherical sweeps wrapped around each other.

The drip: This was made with Blob CSG with the Candle. I use 
         trace to place spheres for the blob. There are a few
         spheres I place by hand to smooth out the connection
         from the the drip to the water around the wick. I moved
         the blob a very small distance from the candle so the
         surfaces wouldn't coincide.  

The bubbles: These are sheres scaled and place by hand.

          
          
Zip-File: Candle.zip


epilogue: 
  My hat's off to all of you who can take and work and rework
  a rendered scene until you get it perfect. I get what I call
  lazy eye. I get bored with a scene. This scene tried my 
  patience. I had test render that ran 2 hours. I'm better at
  placing not so detail models. I do like to make models.
  Belive it or not POV-ray has taught me a little patience.
  (a 15 minute render is nothing)
 
 
 My web page has some basic tools for working with POV-ray.
 All the tools are written in C++ and are for Windows.

 Feel free to E-mail me with any comments and or suggests.
 If you e-mail me make sure you have POV in the subject
 or I WILL NOT read it.