EMAIL: caleb@netactive.co.za NAME: Caleb Hattingh and Braam van Dyk TOPIC: Future COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Piercing The Veil COUNTRY: South Africa WEBPAGE: - RENDERER USED: Povray 3.5 TOOLS USED: Spatch, Adobe Photoshop 6.0, MS Excel(!) RENDER TIME: 1d 08h 44m 27s HARDWARE USED: AMD Athlon 1GHz, 256MB RAM IMAGE DESCRIPTION: It is night, a time for dreaming, imagination, and the unknown. The future always seems a little more uncertain at night than during the day. Gathered before us, we have some of the devices people have used through the ages in their attempts to pierce the veil time hangs before us. We have a crystal ball, into which mystics past have gazed deeply in order to fathom the mysteries of tomorrow. We have the Tarot spread, which seers have used to frame our fate. We have ornamental zodiac symbols, signs of unspeakable horoscopes which chart our path from our very birth. We have the dreamcatchers hanging over the table, which remind us of the power of dreams to light our way. In particular, the dreamcatchers are, according to native american tradition, dream "filters" that catch dreams of confusion in their webs. Dreams of clarity pass through unhindered, because they know their purpose and message. They hang over the other objects in order that their messages are clear and truthful. The moon is bright this night, with an eerie blue hue. The moon casts its dream-like light over the table, creating an atmosphere pregnant with paranormal expectation. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: "We" in this document refers to both Caleb Hattingh and Braam van Dyk. This is Caleb's 3rd entry in the IRTC, and the first for Braam. Firstly a disclaimer: We are not psychics, mediums, or mystics. The scene created, as well as the description above is presented with artistic licence only. We shouldn't have to make this point, but we know that on the web, there are some people with very strong legs, and they can jump to any conclusion no matter how far. Render Settings: Dimension: 1024x768 Command-line settings: +FN -GD +AM2 +A0.01 +R2 Radiosity: // radiosity (global illumination) settings global_settings { radiosity { pretrace_start 0.08 // start pretrace at this size pretrace_end 0.04 // end pretrace at this size count 35 // higher -> higher quality (1..1600) [35] nearest_count 3 // higher -> higher quality (1..10) [5] error_bound 0.2 // higher -> smoother, less accurate [1.8] recursion_limit 3 // how much interreflections are calculated (1..5+) [3] low_error_factor .5 // reduce error_bound during last pretrace step gray_threshold 0.2 // increase for weakening colors (0..1) [0] minimum_reuse 0.015 // reuse of old radiosity samples [0.015] brightness 1.2 // brightness of radiosity effects (0..1) [1] adc_bailout 0.01/2 } } *This scene actually comes out very different without radiosity, because of the strange lighting. In particular, the stand for the crystal ball is MUCH less vibrant. Spatch: We used Spatch for the chairs around the table. The .spt file should be in the zip. We actually started with a windsor chair we downloaded off the web, but in the end we wanted a chair that looked a little different, especially the backrest. In the final picture, as you can see, the chairs are not even that visible. For texturing the chair, I actually ran out of time. I used one the wood textures in "woods.inc", but it didn't turn out that well, and there is not enough time to change it and render again. One day when I get a fast computer... Photoshop: We used Photoshop to put the text in the bottom right-hand corner. We also played around with increasing the brightness and contrast because we thought that the left side of the scene was too dark. However, there is an eerie paleness to the scene as-rendered, and brightness/contrast brought warmth which dulled the effect, in our opinion. So, we just left the picture as rendered. We kinda like the fact that you get to see more the closer you look :) Tarot cards: We managed to obtain a deck of Tarot cards from our Yoga instructor, Jennifer Wilson. We chose a selection of about 20 visually striking cards, and scanned these in, and used these as image-maps. We then put these on rounded boxes scaled to the correct size. We used the RoundBox include-file by Julius Klatte. We then arranged these cards in a circle. Table: The table was fairly easy. 2 flat boxes, but one of them rotated 45 degrees, and then an intersection CSG. We wanted to be a little more fancy, so we put cylinders along the edges of each of the boxes. We could have just used the RoundBox include already mentioned, but we originally intended having a different texture for the trims. Of course, in the end we chose to use the same wood texture for the whole table. Zodiac Symbols: Kinda straightforward, we found a unicode font with zodiac symbols and arranged these in a circle. Crystal ball: A sphere with reflection and refraction. Not rocket science. Pearl Stand for Crystal ball: This is almost rocket science :) It is a blob, made up of rising rings of spheres. To get the shape, we used a function that evaluates a parabola flipped on its side. We found that the blob didn't look that great when the diameter gets small, because the spheres in each circle are then too big to allow place for holes. So we modified the macro to shrink the spheres as a function of diameter. Finally, we put a fine rotation on each successive ring of spheres. We are quite proud of this object. It is available as a macro in our source. Dreamcatchers: Without these, our scene was looking a bit empty. They were mostly easy to construct, except for the feathers and the 'web' inside the rings (You did know those were feathers, right?). The web was made by chopping an arc out of a thin torus, so that the arc fits between the two concentric wooden rings in the dreamcatcher. This arc was then replicated around, and this set of arcs was then copied and flipped to get the arcs running in the opposite direction. The feathers were a little more interesting. We made a XY-scatter plot in Excel, of about 6 points, where the x-range was between 0 and 1. We then dragged the points on the graph to give an outline of one side of a feather. Once the general shape was right, we fitted a 4th order polynomial to these points. We then used this function directly in Povray. We constructed many thin cylinders, each running from an axis, to the point calculated by evaluating our "shape" function, while we move along the axis. Once we have generated one side of the feather, we duplicated and flipped it to make the full feather. The result it that the feather looks reasonable at a distance, and very, very good close-up (although we don't have a close-up in our scene). We want to develop this technique further, when more time becomes available :) Landscape: The landscape is a heightfield, and we also used pov to generate the map. We don't really like the height-field, but at least it is dark outside, and the focus of the scene is elsewhere. Sky: We used Chris Colefax's galaxy include. It is very cool. Stone Wall: We first made a macro for a stone 'brick'. This was made by randomising spheres inside the dimensions of a box and making these into a blob. Then, we arranged the bricks into a wall. Then, we put some code into the macro that would "leave out" some bricks, creating a window. Smoky Room: We made a tranparent box of the same dimensions as our room to create the media. We are not media experts, and we need to experiment much more with the settings to learn how to use it. However, we think the effect in the final scene is quite good. We also need faster hardware to do these experiments :) - - - Finally, we include our source, but without the image-maps because of size limitations. We have tried to make all the objects callable by macros, and we have tried to put each object into a different .inc file. If you take the time to look around, you might find something useful. Many thanks Caleb Hattingh and Braam van Dyk 27 December 2003