TITLE: Ultimate Chemistry Set
NAME: Tim Glover
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: tglover@nettally.com
WEBPAGE: None
TOPIC: Labratory
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: ultchem.jpg
ZIPFILE: ultchem.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    PovRay 3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray 3.1, Paintshop Pro 3.11 (for creation of heightfield and
conversion 
to jpeg) 

RENDER TIME: 
    12.96 days ( 9 sec.parse time)

HARDWARE USED: 
    Dell 233 mHz PentiumII, 64 Mbytes RAM, Win 95

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


I'm a chemist (As in one who does chemistry - not a pharmacist) by training, so
"Laboratory" for me means a Chemistry lab.  My introduction to chemistry
came many years ago in the form of a Gilbert Chemistry Set as a 
Christmas gift.  You might remember them -- lots of little white, squarish
bottles containing various odd chemicals -- powdered sulfur, logwood indicator,
phenolphthalene, sodium nitrate, copper sulfate, etc.  All sorts of
fun, nasty smelling, messy experiments could be done -- learning about
chemistry
in the process.

I just recently finished reading P.W. Atkins "The Periodic Kingdom"
ISBN 0-465-07266-6, which describes the development of the periodic table, the 
discovery of the various elements, and the cyclicity of their various physical
properties.  He uses the literary device of the periodic table being a
new land with different areas having different textures and characteristics.
One of his figures shows the periodic table as a sort of 3D bar chart
with bars being proportional to atomic size.  To me, it resembled a series 
of pedestals to put something on.

I've combined these two themes into my entry.  It's a representation of the 
ultimate chemistry set -- not just a few "safe" chemicals to play with,
but EVERY known element is there, each on its own pedestal made of the element!

The pedestal's height is scaled to the cosmic abundance of each element.  This 
is the proportion of all matter that each element makes up -- in the entire 
universe.  (Yeah, I know, gaseous element's pedestals cannot support a
bottle of the element.  It's ART, ok <grin>)



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


Each new submission I've done lately has had a skill theme.  Usually, this is 
a new aspect of POVRay that I haven't yet used.  I use the competition as an 
excuse to broaden my skills.  This entry is no different.  This entry's
skill theme is textures.  Almost every element has its own texture -- except
the
heaviest trans-uranium elements for which only a few atoms have been 
synthesized -- those I guessed at.  Each texture is based on several
descriptions
of the uncombined element for various text and reference books.  I've included
ALL textures in the .inc file.  If you HAVE to have an accurate texture for
Tantalum or Francium, it's there.

The pedestals are simple cubes, non-uniformly scaled.  The bottles are 
CSG'd from circular lathe objects -- they're meant to resemble the 
standard 40 ml vials used in water sampling.  Gaseous elements are also CSG'd
as the interior of the bottle, while solid and liquid elements have some 
volume removed by a CSG difference with a cube.

Test tubes are also lathe objects.  The spilled powder on the benchtop is 
actually the tops of a heightfield -- a trick I learned from ??? - a guy
that posted a REALLY neat fossil in rock about two years ago.  Thanks!

Test tube rack, bench top, walls (seen and unseen), and roof are all
stretched cube primitives.  Wall tile is brick texture modified to resemble
terra-cotta tile that was on the wall in my undergrad lab.

Lighting is pretty conventional main and fill lights .

Rendering was with radiosity and focal blur -- no AA.  

Warning! lots of glass+radiosity+high confidence focal 
blur settings = LONG renders.  I spent the better part 
of two weeks staring at a 0 PPS screen.  


Also note -- working title was "Periodic Kingdom", so source is 
"perking9a.*"

