EMAIL:         dick@buckosoft.com
NAME:          Dick Balaska
TOPIC:         School
COPYRIGHT:     I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE:         NurserySchool
COUNTRY:       USA (Connecticut)
WEBPAGE:       http://www.buckosoft.com/
RENDERER USED: Povwin 3.01
TOOLS USED:    Corel Photo-Paint 7 - to trim the ostrich,
               Povwin editor - All models/textures typed by hand.
               MSDEV - There are 15 files in nschool.  This was an attempt
                       to create a Makefile.
               Netscape 3.01 - to surf for models.
               LView - for jpeg conversion.
               Calculator - to calculate sin/cos for the wires.
RENDER TIME:   54 minutes, 29 seconds
HARDWARE USED: Dual PPro/200, 128MB Ram, 4.3GB Ultra Fat Hairy SCSI
               Imagine 128 @ 1600x1200x65536, Princeton Ultra 20

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

"After Hours at The Home Depot".  The inhabitants look as though they're afraid 
they'll suffer the same fate as their cousins (The milled lumber) and are 
plotting their escape.  If an ostrich can fly, then so can a tree!  On a shelf it 
looks as if some of Sonya's Alien Cactii have been captured and sold into slavery 
as house plants.  Scott A. Gish's palm trees stand guard in the doorway.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

School.  hmmm.  I had already decided that no matter what the topic, and no
matter what i trace, It's gotta have a Sonya Tree.  OK, now what.  How about a
school of trees.  What are they studying...  To learn to fly!  Well, since i'm
using Other People's Models, i might as well snarf as much plant life as i can,
which ended up being Sonya's Cactii and Scott's palm trees.  I had fun mailing 
everyone (Scott, Sonya and Xavier) asking for permission to use their models.
I didn't tell them they were part of a managerie. :)

I learned a lot about working with wood. ;)  Basically, one must delay defining
the wood texture until the object is created.  In order to get each board to 
have a different grain, the whole palette of 2x4s is declared in one loop.

My wife says that if i loved my 2 year old son, i'd make a "beep beep car".
These little forklifts troll around Home Depot and watching these go up and down
the aisles are the highlight of any visit to the store.  The logo on the
"beep beep car" was made by Marlene for our web page.

<Pov geek>
I learned to love the rand() function.  Every board has the texture translated so
that they aren't the same; which looks horrible.  Each cactus is rotated and 
nudged out of line.

I learned to hate sin()/cos().  OK, when you rotate an object, you rotate it by 
degrees.  The two wires are cylinders and chopped torii.  The one on the saw i did
with a calculator.  The one on the projector i decided to make programaticly so
that i could move and tweak its position easily.  This would be cool.
After 6 hours, when i started doubting my basic trig knowledge, i noticed in the
help file that sin() takes its parameter in radians. 
(Insert sound of head banging keyboard here)
</Pov geek>

There are bigger versions of this pic at
http://www.buckosoft.com/gallery/raytrace/nschool/

This is my first entry in the Internet Raytracing Competition.

There are 67557 objects in this picture!

CREDITS:
ostrich.jpg - Xavier Manget's winning entry from the IRTC round "Flight".
              Used with permission.
Tree 2.0    - Sonya Roberts.  Freeware.
Cactus      - Sonya Roberts. From her entry "cul101" from the IRTC round
              "Space".  Used with permission.
Palm Tree   - Scott Gish.  From his entry "crash" from the IRTC round "Space".
              Used with permission.


LOCAL IDIOMS:
The Home Depot  - is a big ass store that sells everything for the construction
                  and maintenance of homes.
Nursery school  - is where busy moms send their 4 year old children 
                  (before Kindergarten)
Nursery         - is a place to buy trees.