TITLE: darkligh
NAME: Stephen Lavedas
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: swl7m@virginia.edu
TOPIC: Elements
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: darkligh.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POVRay 3.02

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray 3.0, Lview Pro

RENDER TIME: 
    unknown

HARDWARE USED: 
    K6-300 64MB

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

It's late at night and the lonely crates in a government warehouse are guarded
under the ever present spotlights bathing the area.  This warehouse hasn't been
used in years and the dust is the only company the forgotten crates have.  I
wonder
if the Ark of the Covanent is in one of those boxes.

The idea behind this image was that Finite Element Machines (or the pillars
that you see) make really interesting shadow and light play.  I saw a warehouse
seen in a play which sparked my interest.  The pillars are FEMs based on the 
physics description of a group of elements that act like one object.  Bridges 
supports, and cranes make use of FEMs.  Also I was trying to see how
interesting
I could make an image using only one primitive.  (boxes) 

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The image was modelled in Moray.  First I created a large box
and subtracted another from it to create a "room" I find light
plays better in a room than in the open. Then, I created a pillar 
and placed four spotlights on the top of it, I then copied 
it all over (in regular patterns).  I created the crate out of 
box primitives by subtracting three boxes from a fourth and putting
another box inside the result.  The text is in RubberStamp font
and looks for all the world like it was created specifically
for this use.  The only textures are gray (called blah) there are
roughly 21 spotlights in the image.  The large bright area in the
middle is made from a spotlight in the distance that doesn't interact
with the atmosphere.  The other spotlights are all atop pillars 
ad are very tight.  The hardest part was getting enough atmosphere
I settled for Isotropic with 1.0 transmit and 0.25 filter.  The
lack of complexity is made up for by the atmosphere (I mean the
noir look) in my opinion, as well as the interplay of light and
shadow between the spotlights and the pillars.