EMAIL: cguille@hol.fr
       NAME: Claude GUILLEMOT
       TOPIC: Magic
       COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
       TITLE: Artmagic
       COUNTRY: France
       WEBPAGE: http://wwwperso.hol.fr/~cguillem       
       RENDERER USED: Pov-ray 3.0 
       TOOLS USED: Pov-ray 3.0. Photoshop 2.0  for height fields and image-maps
       RENDER TIME: 2 hours 
       HARDWARE USED: PowerMac 7200/75

       IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
In the bedroom of Vincent Van Gogh, in Arles, the smell of oil and fresh paint hangs in the air. Vincent has just gone out to the town to post a letter to his brother, Théo. He writes about the painting he has just finished :
" ...This time, my bedroom, quite simply. Looking at the painting should be restful to the mind, or rather to the imagination. The walls are pale violet, the tiled floor is red. The wood of the bed and chairs is the yellow of fresh butter. The sheet and pillows are a very light lemon-green, the washstand is a shade of orange and the basin, blue. The doors are lilac. That's all. The shutters are closed and the room is empty..."

The magic of art...The magic of a journey backwards from a painting to its model, from the imaginary to the real. As soon as I heard the topic "magic", this vision took hold of me as beeing the expression of an essential magic. A patient, meticulous, scrupulous quest to give shape, colour and life to each object, each texture, each light, guided by a few strokes of paint on a canvas, a few words in a letter...
The magic of ray-tracing...
 
       DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
Let's break with the tradition that says a magician should never reveal his tricks. Here, there's only one trick : Pov-Ray for Macintosh. Some help from Photoshop to create and convert the image-maps (pictures, floor tiles, palette, walls...) and draw the height fields (cloth, clothes, palette...). Delicate work on the lighting : area lights on the entire surface of the celling, a faint light point (0,5) at the exact spot of the camera to soften the whole picture and avoid shadows, and a harsh, yellow-toned light outside.