TITLE: Geology Lab
NAME: Hugh & Anne Gregory
COUNTRY: CANADA
EMAIL: albiaprime@aol.com
WEBPAGE: http://members.aol.com/agre108/crafts/sagewood.html
TOPIC: Laboratories
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: geolab.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray 3.1, Leveler Demo, sPatch, 3D Win,
            Paintshop Pro Demo

RENDER TIME: 
    3 hours 37 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium Pro 160 Mhz, 40megsRAM; PentiumII 350Mhz, 196megs RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Laboratories come in many forms.  The most numerous are the medical and
food industry labs that take care of our health and safe guard the food
we eat.  Smaller in number are the more specialized scientific labs, some
are for industrial research into new products, while an even smaller number
are devoted to pure science and learning more about the universe around us.

For this months topic we have chosen one of the rarer and more dangerous
lab locations, that of a Volcano Observatory, in tribute to those brave
souls who risk life and limb to bring to our understanding the mysteries
and secrets of the inner workings of this planet we live on.

In order for scientists to study volcanos, they have to study the 
composition of the rocks and gases that come out of a volcano in order to 
determine what lies hidden underneath their feet.  

So, we decided to contribute for this topic a Geology Laboratory or
"GeoLab" for short.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


This is Hugh's first and our fourth joint IRTC entry.  A majority of the
artistic placement of items within the GeoLab was his work.

Inspiration for this scene was drawn from several sources...

1.) our own personal visits to volcanos in Hawaii, as well as Mounts
St Helens and Rainer, just across the Canada-USA border, in Washington
State, south of our home in B.C..

2.) having a friend who just received his Ph'd in Vulcanology and our
many hours chatting with him about his work at a Volcano Observatory.

First Hugh used Leveler again, this time to build the volcanic mountain
on which to place our laboratory.  On the top of his mountain he made a
a depression in the top center for the caldera and deep shaft in the
centre of the caldera in which to place our lava lake.

Next he built, using primitives, the foundation and structural frame of
our lab which he textured to make it a wooden frame building.  This 
included a floor made up of spaced individual interlocking 2x4's.  The
ceiling joists were also cross braced.  Sheet Beziers were then generated
to make the sheet metal exterior walls and roof.  He also sectioned off
one corner with internal walls and sheet metal for a bathroom.

While he was doing the basic structure work, I built a horseshoe shaped
lab work table, a kitchen table and chairs for the dining area, a kitchen
area cupboard-counter comb with a sink and faucet, a toilet and hand
basin for the bathroon and a desk with chair for the an office corner.

These were then installed in the completed structure.  Hugh then went to 
work installing florescent lights, electrical conduits, junction boxs and
power outlet recepticals and openable windows with frames and glass.
He also hung a wood and sheet metal door on the bathroom cubical and
installed the same on the lab's entrance door next to the desk.  Just
in case the view we selected looked out that doorway or the window over
the desk he also built and installed a walkway with railings and a set of
stairs leading up to a platform on the caldera's rim.

While he was doing that I started designing and building the lab 
accessories (bottles and flasks, seismometers, scientific scales and 
text books, rocks), the kitchen accesories (coffee mugs, plates, sugar
bowl, cream jug, coffee machine, cookie jars and so on), and the desk 
accessories (ink blotter, telephone, filing cabinet and "in-out" paper
trays).

Next we did a series of "test shots" from various locations inside our
lab to determine what would be the best view.  

We settled on a view looking in from just outside the window over the 
desk.  This looks in and across the lab and kitchen areas.

For dramatic effect at this time we decided to add a balcony as the lab was
right next to the edge of the lava lake central pit and put in a back door.   

To properly show the setting of "GeoLab" Hugh built a small security cam 
type TV monitor with two small TV screens.  We then rendered two shots,
one from the balcony looking down at the Lava Lake and one from the Caldera
Rim platform show the lab's precarious position next to the Lava Lake pit.

Both of these renderings were about 30 minutes each and were image mapped
onto the TV screens of the TV monitors, which we placed on the left side
of our desk (right side of view in the final artwork), where they would be 
clearly visible and understandable in the final image.

Next came the tricky part of creating a visible Lava Lake "glow", to be seen
just through the open balcony door.  To achieve this effect Hugh took our
traditional hollow sphere for the sky, made it non-hollow and then 
differenced a cube from it, leveling the top of the now hollow cube just 
below the balcony floor and extending all the way across the lava lake pit.

Then he experimented with Moray's Fog feature.  We discovered that 
Ground Fog 5 feet thick vertically and set to 10 ft visibility would make
a beautiful glowing reddish mist if we lowered our whole mountain and lab
down until "zero" was only 5 feet below the lab floor.  Voila!  Lava Lake
glow had been created.

This of course necessitated reshooting both of our TV security cam images,
with the fog effect pushing their rendering time up from 30 minutes to 1 
hour 30 minutes for each.

Finally Hugh spent a week "decorating" the inside of our lab with all the
accessories I had been working on over the past weeks.  At the same he
adjusted the lighting to created sunlite patches of light on the floor of
the lab, shining in the open door and windows.

The final step was to ensure image visibility.  After receiving comments of
our previous IRTC entries being too dark, we visited several friends to 
"test view" a GeoLab JPG on their systems.  

On returning home we 
1.)...adjusted down the brightness and contrast on Hugh's monitor to make
 the image look like what we had seen at our friends

2.)...in Moray adjusted upwards the brightness of our sun and GeoLab's 
 interior lights and test rendered over and over until we thought we had 
 it right.  This resulted in a greyish instead of black lava, but at our
 friends we discovered that our black lava just couldn't be seen out the
 windows and back door so we added spot lights and increase material
 ambience (we also had to rerender the TV Monitor images as as well).

Then we then took this adjusted GeoLab JPG over to our friends and viewed
it again on their computers.  We hope that you like the final product of
our efforts this time.

The 800 by 600 BMP took just over 3 hours and 37 minutes to render on POV
using my Pentium II - 350.  The resulting BMP was converted into a JPG with
a Demo version of Paint Shop Pro I downloaded off the internet set to 6%
compression to get the file down under the IRTC maximum file size of 250kb.
 
We Submit To The Standard Raytracing Competition Copyright
                 "Geo Lab" is 
Copyright(c)2000 Hugh & Anne Gregory, All Rights Reserved World Wide.

