TITLE: Beauty Amidst Desolation
NAME: Stephen M. Farrell
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: StephenF@whoever.com
WEBPAGE: n/a
TOPIC: Insects and Spiders
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: desolate.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray for Windows 3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    POV-Ray for Windows 3.1; Paint Shop Pro 6.02 (image compression and
signature only)

RENDER TIME: 
    Approx. 1 hr. 45 min.

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium II 266; 384 mb RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


  A lone butterfly is a spot of beauty amidst the bleakness of rundown houses.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


  First, the butterfly.  A surprising amount of work for what appears to be a
rather simple-looking object.  I started by creating the basic shape of the
body with blobs.  Then, to make the fur, I used while loops to place individual
triangles which follow the outline of the blob shape. (While I think this looks
decent, the fur seems overly thick for a butterfly - it seems better suited to
a wooly caterpillar or a bumblebee, I think.)  Then came the wings, which took
forever and I almost gave up on them several times.  I didn't want to use image
maps, so I used cubic-spline prisms to create both the wings and the patterns
on them.  The wings themselves weren't too bad (a fairly simple 32-point prism
for the front wing), but the pattern on the front wing consists of a single
prism with multiple sub-prisms cut out of it... 491 points, all positioned and
repositioned several times over, all done by trial and error within POV itself.
 (Try it yourself sometime... I'll provide the aspirin!)

  The rest of the scene was fairly simple in comparison... mainly CSG.  The
branch the butterfly rests on is a blob object.  The broken window is a
linear-spline prism with another one cut out of it.  The doll is also a blob
object (and was a late addition; obviously, it could use a lot more work).  The
treetop is the same one I used in the last round (see castle31.txt from that
round if you're interested in more information), with a few modifications to
make it look bigger and fuller.  Basically, it uses while loops to place a
single 'leaf' mesh in a partially spherical shape (along with a lot of
randomness), and then combines several clumps together.  The ground is a simple
textured box.  (I intended to try to recreate it using blobs, to give it a more
natural feel, but didn't have time.)

  About textures... I hate trying to do wood; I've never had much luck getting
anything that looks good.  (Although I do think the wood used here turned out
fairly well.) The colors here are more muted than I usually use... I wanted
everything but the butterfly itself to appear somewhat bleak, to make the
background seem more desolate and make the butterfly stand out more.

  That's about it for this round.  I really do appreciate the
comments/criticisms I've received in the past; they've been a big help to me. 
(Unfortunately, time constraints kept me from voting/commenting last round...
hopefully I should be able to this time out.)  And thanks to everyone for
voting my last entry into 15th place... considering the caliber of the
competition, I consider it a real honor (and it made me feel really good to
boot!)  Good luck to everyone this time around!


