TITLE: Great Wall of China
NAME: James A. Coons
COUNTRY: United States
EMAIL: jacoons@ameritech.net
WEBPAGE: none
FILE NAME:      GWC-72.POV 
JPGFILE:        GWC-72.JPG 
ZIPFILE:        GWC-72.ZIP 


TOPIC: Epic Proportions
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: gwc_72.jpg
ZIPFILE: gwc_72.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    PovRay 3.5 (Windows)

TOOLS USED: 
    ThumbsPlus (Cerius) Image processing and resizing.
                PaintBrush (Microsoft): Image processing and adding Title. 
                QEDIT (Semware)       : Global changes, macros, etc.

RENDER TIME: 
    47 minutes


HARDWARE USED: 
    Intel Pentium 600 Mhz, 65M Ram, Windows Operating System.
DATE STARTED:   05/21/2004
DATE FINISHED:  06/30/2004

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


   John and Jane are tourists, taking a tour of the Great Wall of China.
   Along its winding paths, they take pictures as they go. They have
   been happily staying with the tour and sticking to the approved paths
   and areas. However, after several hours, they quickly become bored
   and leave the group. They wander into the "forbidden" areas beyond
   the guard rails and fences. In the distance, they can see a broken
   section of the wall and decide to investigate. In a short while, it
   begins getting dark. Jane trips over something in the dark, but
   doesn't know what it is. As they come closer to the broken section,
   they realize that something is wrong. As they look inside the gap,
   they see Play-Doh, Crayons and other toys, but they are HUGE! Jane
   had tripped over a giant crayon! They quickly realize that the Great
   Wall is just a play thing designed by some giant child, absent at the
   moment, thank goodness! They start taking pictures of this incredible
   sight, because who would believe them? Behind them, something twig
   snaps and a large shadow falls over them ...
 
How This Image Was Created:

   Terrain:
      The Mountains and attached Ground was created using a Height_Field
      with realistic images and a slope-style.

   Sky:
      The Sky is a cloud Image mapped onto a sphere using "Creative
      Pigment Blending", as described below. By blending and subtracting
      variations of the original image, I stumbled onto a amazingly
      complex sky textures. By setting the "Sky_Angry" parameter in the
      rendering, the sky is given more contrast and appears more
      "angry". A more realistic result was obtained by using a large
      "squashed" sphere instead of a "Sky Plane".

   Walls:
      The Wall is an elongated box, textured with a maniplated photo of
      the actual Wall of China I found at Google.Com. I tried doing it
      in two pieces, but then decided do a single wall and then remove
      the parts I didn't want. I wanted to use a Procedural Height Field
      (with a Function) to create realistic bricks, but decided against
      it because it increased the rendering time too much and I couldn't
      get it to look right. I had to use a copy of the Wall with a
      rotated texture to get the bricks on the top of the Wall to work
      properly.

   Gate and Door.
      The Gate is a Height_Field with the same texture as the Wall. It
      contains a Door, also a Height_Field, which is also the same texture
      as the Wall. 

   Ray-Doh Container:
      The Ray-Doh container is a decorated cylinder with a Height_Field
      for the Ray-Doh Ball.

   Ray-Doh Ball:
      The ball of Wall-Colored Ray-Doh is a Height_Field with a
      variatino of the Pigment used for the Wall.

   Crayons:
      The Ray-Ola Crayons are created with a macro, using cylinders with
      a Height_Field for the Crayon Stick. They are decorated with
      individual Image_Maps maps for the crayon wrappers.

   Murals:
      a. The first mural is a box decorated with Chinese characters
         (generic).

      b. The second mural is a box decorated with a Chinese Emperor
         (unnamed).

            The mysterious writing on the mural can be deciphered as
            follows:

               1. Upper left reads "James Anthony Coons" in the "Symbol"
                  Font (Greek).
               2. Upper right reads "POV-Ray Epic Proportions Topic" in
                  the "Markab" Font.
               3. Lower left reads "His sons were giants, literally" in
                  the "Markab" Font.

      c. The third mural is a box decorated with Chinese Calligraphy
         (generic).

   Creative Pigment Blending:
      I found that it is possible to "subtract" colors by averaging in
      negative "weight" values within the Pigment_Map. It is possible to
      create intricate patterns from a simple pattern by translating,
      rotating, scaling, adding and substracting variations of a single
      Pigment. This is the method I used for the Sky and Grass.

About This Submission:

   This is my first submission to the IRTC. I have been looking at other
   IRTC entries for ideas and to occasionally render them myself. This
   is my first Project with a specific idea in mind - most other
   projects just evolved as I went. I was in Chile and Mexico for nearly
   a month doing missions work, so I was unable to put as much effort
   into the final project as I wanted.

   I developed a rather useful method of working on this project. I
   created a "Master Image", which I kept in BMP format. When making
   small changes, I rendered a small area around the change and then
   copy/pasted the resulting change into the Master Image using
   MicroSoft PaintBrush, which I kept open during development. Only when
   major changes were made (and of course, when doing the final render),
   was it necessary to re-render the entire image.

   I also found is useful to insert "Flags" at important locations in
   the source code, so I could easily find what I was looking for. So,
   the Flags "/Can", "/Wall", "/Cam", "/Road", etc, help me locate
   important sections more easily. I kept the Flags in the Final Source
   File.

Interpreting the Topic "Epic Proportions"

   Before arriving at my final idea for "Epic Proportions", I considered
   these:

      1. "When the Gods " ... play chess, get mad, make mistakes,

      2. Paul Bunyan's Market - Containing such items as "continental
         shelf", "northern lights" and "gulf stream", as well as "sales"
         on very large objects, such as the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, etc.

      3. Also Paul Bunyan's Garage Sale and Auction, Flea Market.

      4. God's Prototypes - CAD images of galaxies, planets, rejections,
         etc.

      5. Chess Game with large objects for pieces, played by giants.

      6. What "normal-sized" people would do with Paul Bunyan's
         throw-aways.

      7. Small things made of large things, such as DNA made of planets.

      8. Large things made of small things, such as a molecule made of
         galaxies.

      9. Lego Landscape - With a few changes, this lead to my final
         idea.

         I hope my interpretation is humorous to someones else beside
         myself.

James Anthony Coons


