EMAIL: jaime@ctav.es
NAME: Jaime Vives Piqueres
TOPIC: MAGIC
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: vodu (or vodun, vudu, woodoo, etc...)
COUNTRY: Spain
WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/1090
RENDERER USED: POVRay 3.01 (C) POVTeam. (DOS version)
TOOLS USED: Qedit (C)SemWare, PaintBrush (C)ZSoft.
RENDER TIME:  06:18:28 for 800x600 with aa (W95 DOS box).
HARDWARE USED: (New!) Intel PPro180 overclk. (00:03:10 on skyvase bench!:)
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Little temple of a vodu believer (and w95 user?)
DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

 - Theme justification :

 When "MAGIC" was anounced as the next subject, I thought that this topic was
 much more inspiring that the last one (Ph&M), but, thinking about concrete
 (and realizable) ideas I wasted much of the round time. Most of these ideas
 were too topic or needed the presence of a magician (or at least his hands!).

 As usually, I looked at my "documentation file" (a stack of old magazines),
 and I found some articles on woodoo, but none of them included good photos
 of temples nor any related object.

 Then, I started my browser and looked for "woodoo or vudu or vodu" in a 
 search engine. Appart from lots of stuff about a rock group called VUDU, 
 I found many links related to vodu, most of them including photo galleries
 of tombes and temples, and explanations about this poorly known religion. 
 After looking at photos of temples, I've selected some simple objects (easy
 to do), to make my own temple: bottles, candles, fruit offerings and backg.
 flags, etc... Then, I thought about one person to play woodoo with, and Bill
 seemed to me the best choice... ;)

 Although I've thought first on woodoo as a good "MAGIC" theme (black MAGIC,
 of course), I knew later that "black magic" is only a little part of woodoo
 religion, practiced by secret societies.

 - Realization :

 The main work on this image was typed in Qedit and raytraced with POV. There
 are some image_maps and height_fields created with Paintbrush and some others
 picked from the net (see below for links). The last week, I showed a preview
 of the scene in my home page to collect some comments. Thanks to everyone.
 The feedback showed me the weak points and the posible solutions. Thanks!

 No great tricks or unexplored features here: only typical features used in
 typical ways. I've collected some objects from my recent scenes, but I've
 enhanced them for this ocassion.

 The doll was made placing blob spheres by hand, and has a strange shape, but
 is the best I can do for a human figure. The doll texture try to simulate a
 patchwork with cloths. 

 The photo frame and broken glass, and the cross shape, are height_fields.

 Candles, vases and plate done with Lathe Object. The fruits are while loops of blobs
 with semi-random positions. The burning incense stick  has a nice smoke halo
 done with a cone: simple but looks quite real. The courtain or flag image is
 from a shareware CD, but the height_field for it was done with another pov
 scene. The rest is pure CSG of simple objects...

 You are free to use this picture as your windows wallpaper if you plain to
 convert yourself to woodoo or simply if you want to annoy Bill (Perhaps if
 many people try it, it will work! ;) Thats all! Enjoy it!

                                      Jaime Vives Piqueres (jaime@ctav.es)


INSPIRING LINKS:

Libation Bottles picked from:
 <http://www.fmch.ucls.edu/exhibit/tour2> -> The New Orleans Museum

Bill Photo downloaded at:
 <http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Bill.Gates.html> -> A serious interview to Bill

Photo galleries and information pages:
 <home.gnofn.org/~woodoo/pictures> -> Lots of temple pics
 <http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/6157/> -> more pics and info
 <http://www.arcana.com/shannon/voodoo/vodoo.htm> -> info on Haitian Vodu

Bonus URL :
 <http://fmed2.uncu.edu.ar/~gonzalo/files/bill_jokes.html> -> Bill jokes