-*- text -*-

************************************
*** minimum -- An entry for the  ***  2005-08-03
*** July-August 2005 IRTC round. ***  (c) 2005 Bertrand Petit
************************************
    Release notes


This Povray scene description file is a "distilled" version of the
file that was used to render the "bpmini" entry of the July-August
2005 IRTC round. The topic was labeled as follows:

  Minimalism

  Extreme simplification of form, action, or concept. Any thing,
  process, or idea that has been trimmed down to its barest
  essentials. Either your entry can be minimalist, or can be a
  depiction of something "minimal", or both.

The submitted rendering is included in an unaltered form.


==============================================================================
Manifest
==============================================================================

This distribution is composed of the following files:

Makefile

  Any Unix user known what this is. Others need only known that this
  is a configuration file a software building tool called make. I use
  this program to completely replace the Povray .ini files.

README

  The file you're currently reading.

bpmini.txt

  This is the submission text file that accompany the submitted
  rendering.

minimum.png

  The submitted rendering as it was generated by Povray, untouched by
  any hand.

minimum.pov

  This is the core of the release: the scene description file. It is a
  "distilled" version where all tests, variants, blind-alleys and
  speed/quality parameters were removed.


==============================================================================
Rendering
==============================================================================

This scene, as distributed here can not be directly rendered. I had to
expel two files for which, I presume, I does not have distribution
rights. However you can obtain them yourself. Keep reading.

This first file is an image mapped to a sphere enclosing the whole
scene. This setting is a common base for some of my scenes. I use a
black and white photograph by Philip Greenspun to provide "something
to see" on reflective surfaces and to serve as light bouncing surface
for global illumination-based renderings. Just think of this
photograph as a side-effect generator. As this scene uses the
radiosity feature of Povray it has to be used if one want to render
again the scene. A large JPEG file can be obtained from the author
gallery at 

  <URL:http://www.photo.net/photo/pcd0196/railroad-tracks-35.tcl>.

The second omitted file is the font file that was used as the geometry
source for the rendered word. I have chosen the Bubbleboy font
designed by Jakob Fischer (<URL:http://www.pizzadude.dk/>). Again this
font can be freely obtained, this time through the DaFont repository:

  <URL:http://www.dafont.com/font.php?file=bubbleboy>

Beware, the distributed font files can't be used as is with Povray: it
misses some TrueType tables that are used to locate glyphs from
character codes. Povray seems to be a little out of sync against the
TrueType specifications. To overcome this problem I advise the use of
FontForge. Just open the original TrueType file and regenerate a new
one. The newly built file should be usable. However this fresh font
file will not generate an exact replica of the submitted scene as I
made a slight change on the O character. The character was drawn with
its lower curve tangent to the baseline. I suppose I don't have the
right to distribute the modified version I made, so you're stuck with
the incorrect public version.


If you collect the two missing files you'll be able to render again
the scene just by typing "make" in the scene directory. After a few
hours you'll have a fresh new rendering. It took roughly 11 hours to
compute the submitted pictures on a 1.7GHz Pentium IV host. This
duration is the absolute value reported by Povray but it is invalid in
regard to a fresh rendering as I made more renderings at higher
resolutions before the final one. Each successive rendering reused
global illumination calculation kept by the previous rendering thus
reducing the final image computation time.


==============================================================================
Links
==============================================================================

My place on the web is located at <URL:http://www.bsd-dk.dk/~elrond/>.

A print of a rendering generated from the scene file discussed here
can be purchased from Zazzle behind this long link:

  <URL:http://www.zazzle.com/link.asp?associate_id=238620031415155215&redirect=product&product_id=228125601502764875>


==============================================================================
Contact
==============================================================================

Questions, reproduction inquiries, etc. are welcome. Please mail your
queries to < irtc at phoe dot frmug dot org >. If you value your
privacy you can send OpenPGP encrypted mails, the author's key is
available on public keyrings under the 0606CEF7 ID, it has the
following fingerprint:

    79C9 10C8 9C3A 3F35 482F  06D6 150B A8BB 0606 CEF7

Note that things such as HTML e-mails, word documents, etc. will be
blindly discarded.


==============================================================================
Fine print
==============================================================================

The renderings generated by the hereby distributed scene file, if it
is used without substantial modifications, are licensed under the
terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
License France. License details are available at the following
locator:

  <URL:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/fr/>

This means that you can use the rendering for your own non commercial
works, that my complete unabbreviated name must be located nearby the
image, and that if you alter, transform, or build upon this rendering,
you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical
to this one.

The same licensing terms are applied to the scene file and the
distribution archive it came in.

Other licensing terms can always be discussed, please contact me at
the e-mail address printed in the previous section.


 LocalWords:  README IRTC bpmini ini txt png pov Greenspun Bubbleboy DaFont
 LocalWords:  CEF bubbleboy TrueType FontForge irtc NonCommercial ShareAlike
 LocalWords:  Zazzle

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