TITLE: GreenWood
NAME: Leroy Whetstone
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: lrwii@joplin.com
TOPIC: Winter
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: grnwood.jpg
ZIPFILE: grnwood.zip
RENDERER USED: 

 Povray 3.5.beta.11-16 Windows


TOOLS USED: 

 jpeg conversion: Photo Plus
 Height field 1 bitmap tga:Lview
 Height field 2 bitmap gif:Liner(my own contruction)

  Makegrass.pov by Gilles Tran - March 1999


RENDER TIME: 

 Parse: 23 sec.
 Trace: 1hr 12 min. 47 sec.



HARDWARE USED: 

 Anthon 1.2Ghz 256 Meg RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Time to feed and water the cows in my nabor's pasture on a winter's late
afternoon.
The sky is clear and the sun is going down. Looks like it'll be a cold night.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


  This is my Twelve entry. This round's subject had a lot of possibilities.
 I had just made a snowflake pov that used random points in a prizm, then
 rotated copies of that prizm around a center. It made a pretty good 
 snowflake. My first thought was to make a few hundred of them and place
 thousands of copies of them in falling onto a field. But My last entry was 
 abstract and I wanted to do something different. Maybe a airplane with elves
 making and throwing out snowflakes.(still to abstract) So I looked around
 where I live. I live in the woods. Really, I have an acer of land surrounded
 by trees and hills. I have play with making trees but I never truly liked the 
 way they came out. I didn't think I would be able to do justice to my woods.  
 But there is a valley not far away that would do. 

SCENE :
 size: 800 * 600
 antialias threshold .1 method 2 depth 3
 frame level objects: 21,938

lights: 1 white
         1 light_group white

Sky:  a simple shy_sphere with a gradient y pigment tilted slightly

Objects:
 pasture:  a height_field with 'blob' placed in the foreground using trace 
            This is the first thing I did, I play around with height_fields and

            lights and textures until I found a good combination. Even so the
            height_field  in the foreground look to stark so I added 'blob'
there to 
            smooth things out. 
          
 Hills: a height_field covered with mesh trees using trace. I tried to use
        USGA data to make the height field but the data I have was to course.
        So I had to make my own. For the trees I first tried to use textured
        spheres to have the appearance of trees. They looked like gaint
snowballs. 
        So i decided to try Gilles Tran's Tree macro. A few sample trees told me
that
        wouldn't do.(to slow to much memory)I even try a macro I wrote for an 
        earlier round entry, ReversTree. Same thing. I decide what I need was a
        mesh. More about this under Trees.
 Trees: When I decided to use mesh1 for the trees I download Paul Danson's
"ptdtree3.zip"
        And took a look. It was not what I wanted. But it gave me an idea.
        I could take my ReverseTrees macro change it to generate a mesh file.
                    (it is in the zip file as MeshTree2.pov)
        Then I made 12 different trees files. When I place a tree on a hill
        there are 2 identical meshes one textured with snow and the other Brown.

        The snow one was moved up and to the left just alittle and both rotated
        randomly. I like the effect so much that I use the same technique for
        the trees along the fence.
 Fences:
       2 side fences: simple cylinders,spheres and cones texture accordingly. I
had 
                     to shorten each post away from the viewer, because the
scale
                     of the height field, to keep perspective. Not hard, all I
had 
                     to is add a little equation in the While loop that place
them.  
       foreground: The post here are the same as for the side fences rotate a
little
                  from vertical. The wire was the fun part here, first I use 
                  'sphere_sweep' which made pretty good wire. But trying to
place
                  the barbs with 'spline' function didn't work. So I use
'spline'
                  to make the wire and place the barbs. I left the lowest wire
a
                  'sphere_sweep' so it'll look more covered with snow.
 
 Weeds: 
       Grass: from 'Gilles Tran's Grass macro' 
              I played around with this until I got the grasses I wanted. 
              When I place them with only the main light they where Black.      
      
              So I put then in a light group with global set on.
              They fit in pretty well with the 'blob'. 
       saplings: more of my meshed trees scale way small
 
 Cows: are CSG I made a macro to move the legs,head,and tail

 Truck: is a combination CSG with prisms,sphere, cones. With 'blob' snow thrown

       on using 'trace'. I worked a lot on the detail here. There is a man 
       sitting inside that's hard to see because of the mirror. I like the way 
       the snow half berried the headlights.

 radio towers: cylinders pigmented using 'gradient y' and 'no shadow'
 
 Hay and holder: 
                The holder is made of cylinders and torii 
                The hay is cylinder pigmented with 'gradient x' .25 turbulence
                and 'normal{agate}'
 Water trough:
              The container was inspired by a bucket in POV 3.5 include file
              You can barely see the water. I can't decide if it's ice or not.
               
 
 House: boxes  textured and tilted appropriately there is even a fence around it
using 
          only a textured box
  
 
epilogue: There are a few things I'd like to clarify about this scene. First the
area
             on the hill where there are no trees, is where a power line is
going in. At 
             first I didn't like it and wanted to have this scene as my protest.
I used to fish
             in the creek that runs along that ridge (twenty  years ago). But
now that I
             have though about it, I have no right to complain. I'll probably
use that electric to
             make even more pictures.
              Second the creek in my scene is not seen, but is represented by
the lack of trees.
             I thought about adding fog there but the creek is small and the
trees are tall. It 
             couldn't be seen any way.
              And lastly I wanted to say something about the sky. Its plain, I
know, but I've seen
             winter days like this and I know that when night comes it will get
bitter cold. I hope
             that this sky in this scene gives that feeling of that impending
weather.  
               
 
Zip-File: Grnwood.zip should have everything to parse the scene.
          There are 24 files in it.This is the first time I am
          trying to put such a big project into a zip so if there are
          any omittions let me know.
         
         The files:
         Grnwood.pov// the main program
         Grnwood.ini
         Gwtree3.pov// the Ridge with trees
         fence.pov// wire for the foreground fence
         Truck2.pov
         Cow.pov
          //Grasses
          Sgrass3.inc
          Sgrass4.inc
          Sgrass5.inc
         MeshTree2.pov// make leafless trees
         //Trees made with MeshTree2 
          MyTree1.Tms-MtTreeC.Tms
         Sland4.tga//TGA for plane Heightfield
         Gwfd2b.gif//GIF for ridge Heightfield 
         
Feel free to E-mail me with any comments and or suggests.





