EMAIL: sshaw@fas.harvard.edu
NAME: Scot Shaw
TOPIC: Unbelievable
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Compelling Yet False
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: www.fas.harvard.edu/~sshaw
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.1
TOOLS USED: POV-Ray, L-Sys, Poser 3, PhotoShop 5.0
RENDER TIME: Around 12 hours
HARDWARE USED: 266 MHz Pentium, 64 Megs of RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

A man in a classroom, perhaps after a class has been dismissed,
ponders a "proof" on the blackboard that 2=1.  It is an illustration
of how (seemingly) correct steps can lead to an unbelievable
conclusion.

This "proof" is one that I enjoy showing to friends, especially
those who are mathematically minded.  It is clearly wrong in its
conclusion, but the error can be subtle.  My first inclination
for this topic was to look to physics for some theory that, while
demonstrably correct, goes against our physical intuition (such as
special relativity).  However, I wanted to have the "unbelievable"
centerpiece something that everyone could appreciate.

I hope that at least some of the viewers can enjoy a few moments
of the confusion that my man in the classroom is meant to show.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

There is nothing too ambitious in this image.  My entry in the
previous round was my first, and I took away from the comments that
I should be more careful with the textures in the image, and not
get carried away with modelling.  As a result, I have thought about
most of my surfaces and made them something other than a single
layer texture with no normal map.  I have tried in this image to spread
out the detail a bit, so that one area or object doesn't dominate.

I also split up the source more than I have done in the past, and
made use of the new POV-Ray macros for the first time.  The books are
done as macros, with arguments for size and color.

The writing on the board was done in PhotoShop and imported with
a transparent channel (to show the blackboard texture under the
writing).  I gave the board a marble surface normal, hoping that
the result would look a bit more realistic than a flat black
rectangle would.  How often does one see a blackboard that has been
completely cleaned?

The man is a Poser person, and the tree outside of the windows is
done with L-Sys.  I am not proud of using external programs to
generate elements of my image; I prefer to do all of the modeling
myself.  However, I wouldn't put a person in my image unless I
thought it looked good, and I was never able to do that to my
satisfaction.  For the tree, I started to write a program of my own
to make them, and came to realize fairly soon that I was
re-inventing the wheel.

For the lighting, all of the light sources are as they appear in the
image.  There are three sunken ceiling lights along the front of
the room, providing illumination of the board.  The fluorescent
lights are area lights; note that there is another set of two
ceiling lights above the camera, out of the view.  In case you are
bothered by some of the light on the ceiling, you should know that
there are holes in the tops of the fluorescent lights (for
ventilation).  There is a large yellowish area light outside,
providing some sunlight for the tree.