TITLE: Band van M_bius fancy
NAME: Knut Roll-Lund
COUNTRY: Norway
EMAIL: kr-lund@online.no
WEBPAGE: http://kr-lund.home.online.no
TOPIC: Insects and Spiders
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: moebius.jpg
ZIPFILE: moebius.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray for Windows 3.1g

TOOLS USED: 
    Borland C, sPatch 1.5

RENDER TIME: 
    24m10s

HARDWARE USED: 
    PIII 450MHz 128MB

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

Ants walking on a Moebius band, the funny shape with only one surface.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The models used was not especially made for the competition. It is my version
of M.C. Escher's Band van M_bius II. It is not a copy as you might see, if you
put the images side by side. The differences are intentional.

The band is created by a C program. I created the C program specifically for
this purpose. The band in itself is actually a circle with a half twist and
wobbeling. The wobbeling is what makes the figure 8 when viewed from the side.
My band turns evenly. To make an Escher clone the turn must vary. The result
is that the ant on the top is behind the band.

The ants are drawn in sPatch, and are based on Escher's ants. I first drew one
standing on a flat surface. Since the band is curving in quite a nasty way
each of the 9 ants had to be fitted manually to its specific place, 9 ants
times 6 legs and the curving of the back. It was a horrible amount of hours
put into that.

The lighting is a bit sharp, this helps to give back some of depth lost in the
tele-lens.

I was tempted to give the ants a coloring like normal forest ants here in
Norway, but fell back to the more original red.

The background had to be a sky but it reflected in the ants eyes. To remedy
this I blocked out the sky except where it can be seen.

(Did you know that Earth is the planet of the ants. Even the estimated weight
of all ants is larger that the estimated weigth of all humans.)

