TITLE: Noblemans pastime
NAME: Felix Cederling
COUNTRY: Sweden
EMAIL: felixce@hotmail.com
WEBPAGE: -
TOPIC: The Laboratory
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: fclab.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Pov-Ray 3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    none

RENDER TIME: 
    38 min 33 sek

HARDWARE USED: 
    pentium 166 MMX

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

During the renaissance and barock (16th & 17th centuries)
many noblemen practiced astronomy as a hobby.
Many had luxurius villas or country palaces
with large gardens. The relatively modern 
looking telescope (except for the silly looking
measuring divice on the side) is actually from the period(1650). The object
composed of 
golden circles on the table is
a poular astronomical model frequently used
during this period. The wider band represents the zodiac,
remember astrology was taken much more 
seriusly in those days.
The architecture is of course also from the period,
the white building on the left 
a slightly enlarged and altered version of 
Jacopo Sansovinos venetian library.
(See, a very strong and obvious connection to laboratorys and learning. ;)


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

Most objects were modelled with the csg objects, except for the bushes and trees
whitch were made with blobs &
a lot of help from the random number generator.
I didn't use modellers so the
scene is divided into several smaller scenes, 
whitch in turn where broken into smaller scenes (etc etc)
to become more manageble.
Each individual scene is created with pencil and paper
and then integrated into the final scene. 
(A "scene" here means a macro with several parameters)
This method is perfect for controll freaks but
it has its drawbacks, the 19 600 objects required 
a parse time of more than 2 min
(2 min of thrashing harddrive, i hate that !)
when the macros translated each other back and forh.
Normally if less complex features where used 
20 000 objects would only require somthing like 20 sec.
I had also planned to use radiosity but the planning
turned out to be bad so there was no time for that.
(More accurately, modelling consumed all my time
as usually)
I dare not think about the rendering time on my
computer.


