TITLE: tick
NAME: Leroy Whetstone
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: lrwii@janics.com
TOPIC: Contrast
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: tick.jpg
ZIPFILE: tick.zip
RENDERER USED: 

Povray 3.1g Windows


TOOLS USED: 

jpeg covertion: Mustex
POV editor: (unnamed) by me & PFE (Programer's File Editor) by Alan
Phillips




RENDER TIME: 


37 min. 19 sec.



HARDWARE USED: 

Amd K6 500Mhz 128 Meg RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


The Lone Star Tick: Amblyomma Americanum



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


This is my seventh entry. I wanted to do something straight on topic. Most
of my pictures
have been an unique interpolation or try to be. I wanted to do a relative
simple object and
concentrate on the textures. In that respect this picture did what I
wanted.
I spent a lot of time doing research for this scene. I searched the
internet, that's where I found the type of ticks we have around our place.
I caught a few put them under a microscope. (had to fix some lights for
that microscope)
The first two tick I caught where the Lone Star type. But I had trouble
finding more of that
type. It was amazing how many different kind of ticks there where. Dog
ticks, Deer ticks,
young ones, old ones, fat ones, starved ones, before I knew a month has
gone by and
all I had done where a few sketches.


SCENE :
size: 800 * 600
I used focal blur with 2 for the armature, 20 for the sample rate and
confidence of .99.

Objects:

Lights: 2, one shadow less

Tick: uses all CSG
body: flatten sphere clipped by a box and pigmented with an image map
legs: I tested several lathe objects intersected together and use the best
3.
For hairs, I use cones place randomly
there are 3 different legs types, the top, middle legs, and the tips
the legs where place using my spline macro
each leg had its own array for rotating
head: 4 cones in a transparent cylinder

leaf: a CSG using an height field and a prism
the height field gives the leaf a bend and some grain
the main grain or ripple effect was made with the normal
the center vane was done with pigment when done without blur it was tight,
with blur it grew wider but I still like the effect

Background: 2 height fields one with transparency in its color_map
there is only one height field GIF scaled by 200,5,200
then I place 2 copies one below the other and rotated
both using gradient y pattern with different color maps
after I did a test render, it needed something, so I added a few cylinders
and spheres

Zip-File: tick.zip is 204k long and should have everything needed to
duplicate TICK
contains: tick.pov
tick.ini // will have to be changed for you system
bugleg3.lat // lathes for legs
bugleg2.lat
grass2.prm // prism for grass
grass4.gif //200*200 for grass
wild.gif // 200*200 for background
tick.tga // 200*200 image_map for tick

Epilogue: This last two months have been hectic. Between work (the house
from hell)
spring cleaning, truck troubles, computer upgrades, I had little time for
this picture.
But it always in the background. When I've done scene before I'd have a
solid week
to set it up. Then the rest of the two months to tinker. This was a new
experience for
me.
This also the first time I use POVwin. I can't say enough good things about
it. But I
do want to thank the POV team for a truly superb program!

Feel free to E-mail me with any comments and or suggests.



