TITLE: The Black Hole Drain
NAME: Blaine Holmes
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: bsholmes@utah-inter.net
WEBPAGE: None (yet)
TOPIC: Physics & Math
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: blackhol.jpg
ZIPFILE: blackhol.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.01 for Windows

TOOLS USED: 
    Editor, Corel Photo Paint 6 to manipulate the GIF image map
used in sky sphere and for JPG conversion

RENDER TIME: 
    approximately 1 day, 9 hours

HARDWARE USED: 
    Cyrix 6x86 166+ (133 Mhz) w/ 32 MB Memory

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

   Interpretation of a graphical representation of a gravity well created 
by a black hole, intentionally made to look like a tile drain with a plug 
(manufactured by PLUGCO, "We got a stopper for anything") in it and filled 
with water.  A little play on the whole space/time thing.  Throw in a few 
Einstein and Theory of Relativity items and we are ready to go!
   The zip contains all the different fonts I used and the sky Einstein 
cloud GIF.  Pop these in your include file and your ready to render.
   I have intended to submit to an earlier themes (flight and glass) and 
just haven't had the time to complete an image enough for a suitable 
submission, so here is my first submission.  I am a perfectionist and 
still tweaking this one like crazy and have just run out of time.  
   When I first saw the Physics and Math theme I couldn't come up with 
anything witty, until in June, I was in the shower, early in the morning, 
still foggy headed, and "DING!", it hit me.  I hope you enjoy!

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

   The tile gravity well is a stretched torus and a disc with layered 
textures.  A color map and slope map have been specified for each texture 
to get the tile look.  The reflection on the tile is of the clouds above 
and the black part near the water is the reflection of the of the water 
which is a reflection of the tile on the other side.  I attempted to use 
layered normal maps for the tile look and had to forget it because it 
looked terrible.
   The water is a union of a box with a blob of spheres on top.  Using 
any flat object with normal modifiers looked good, except at the waters 
edge it made a perfect eclipse no matter how bumpy the water was.  This 
way the waters edge is not precise (took a bit longer to trace as well!).
   The drain is a sphere, two torii, raised text and a difference of 
cylinders and spheres for where the ring attaches.  The metal ring is 
torus pieces offset.
   The floating letters are text objects, obviously.
   The Einstein phrase is produced with a hollow box, placed out of the 
picture with the text cut from one side and an intense yellow light inside 
to give us the projector effect.  I was going to just use spotlights with 
text in the way to produce shadows, but I like the way this turned out!
   Also out of the scene is a large sphere surrounding the whole image for 
a cloudy sky.  It consists of two pigment maps, the lower is a image map 
with some pictures of Einstein placed on it to look like clouds.  I was 
hoping to see these images in reflections off the tile and water, and if 
you look closely you may see vague images but this one didn't come to full 
fruition.
   I pulled the Einstein pictures and the quote off the net and didn't 
track where I got them from.  Sorry!  So, thanks to whomever is so 
dedicated to Einstein and his work to provide the site.  Thanks!

