EMAIL: bill@atria.com
NAME: Bill Marrs
TOPIC: Magic
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
COUNTRY: USA
TITLE: Hat and Cards
WEBPAGE: http://www.apocalypse.org/pub/u/bill/
RENDERER USED: Povray for Windows 3.0.2
TOOLS USED:  PoVSB .99o modeler, sPatch, Texture Magic, Lviewpro
RENDER TIME: 35 minutes
HARDWARE USED:  Pentium 90, 64MB, HP scanner
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

A scene of a stage magician's tools in action.  As a spotlight beams down,
a wand waves over the hat, while the cards come flying out into the audience.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

I used sPatch to model the hat, cards, curtain and table.  This was my
first time using sPatch, so I was very pleased at how much power it gave
me to create spline patches.  The hat was an L-shaped spine which I
rotated.  The table top was a similar rotation.  The table legs (not
visible in scene :-( ) were extruded.

I imported all those objects into PoVSB where I arranged them, added
lighting (used a spotlight to help the "stage look"), a floor, a
green cloth, and a wand.

I used a scanner to make the card image maps.

Almost all textures were made in Texture Magic.  I spent a long time
getting the cards aligned just right.  The card image-maps were hand
edited a bit as well.  My image maps were more square than my cards,
thus the back had to be trimmed.  Really, my card image maps are funny.
I used only half the image on the foreground (card faces), the image
maps have "backs", but they are not visible.  Also, because of an
alignment problem, that I didn't feel was worth fixing, the backs of the
cards are the same as the fronts.  The same is true of the background
cards (card backs), they are actually double-backs.

I spent some time getting the math of the card rotation and movement
right, and still it isn't quite right.  I suspect the card faces don't
really make sense on close scrutiny.  ...I'm not even sure anymore.

Special thanks to the people of "Work Week" at the Blue Forest Farm.


FILES IN THE ZIP FILE:

table.spt       - sPatch model for the table (has nice legs, 
                  though the scene does not really show them)
hat.spt         - sPatch model for the hat.
curtain.spt     - sPatch model for the curtain (used twice in scene)
card.spt        - sPatch model for the rounded edge cards
flooring.gif    - image map for the floor, rendered in pov to get wood
                  texture, then edited in Lview to make into a tile.
as.gif          - Ace of spades image map (scanned in)
7d.gif          - 7 of diamonds image map (scanned in)
kd.gif          - King of diamonds image map (scanned in)
joker.gif       - Joker image map (scanned in)
js.gif          - Jack of spades image map (scanned in)
gh.gif          - Queen of hearts image map (scanned in)
backs.gif       - Card backs image map (scanned in)
hatcards.inc    - Generated texture include from Texture Magic
include.inc     - PoVSB standard include file (not much in it)
hatcards.spb    - PoVSB scene file
hatcards.pov    - Generated (by PovSB) POV source file 
hatcards.txm    - Texture Magic texture file