TITLE: Elementary Spectral Analysis (bs-esa.jpg)
NAME: Bob Sewell
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: bsewell@usit.net
WEBPAGE: http://www.public.usit.net/bsewell/index.html
TOPIC: Math & Physics
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: bs-esa.jpg
ZIPFILE: bs-esa.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    PovRay 3.1 for Windows 32-bit

TOOLS USED: 
    Calculator, Photoshop 2.5 LE (for title and TGAJPG conversion)

RENDER TIME: 
    1 hr, 55 min, 58 sec

HARDWARE USED: 
    AT&T Globalyst 630 (P133 w/64MB RAM)


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    Light through a simple prism. Good thing I'm not entering
to win, 'cause I don't have the talent nor the time to seriously compete here! 
I'm only after suggestions for improvement.  Anyway, this is just an experiment
which builds upon my previous exercises with light through a prism.  


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 
    All objects were built by hand,
which was simple to do with such simple objects.  The walls and floor are
simple polygons, the flashlight a union of a cylinder with the intersection of
a box and an elongated sphere, plus the switch, a box with a row of about 9
cylinders offset to dip into the switch body for an "easy grip."  The prism is
a box rotated 45 degrees with another box subtracted from a diagonal half.  All
textures are Povray standard issue textures, with one exception.  The prism
glass I had to fiddle with a bit to get it to reflect some of the light back to
the camera.  All I did was take the T_Glass2 texture and change the rgbf to
rgbt, thereby transmitting the white color that T_Glass2 was filtering.

The spectrum is a row of six spotlights with the same originating point but six
"point ats" which differ by a half a unit, each new color creeping further up
the wall than the last.  The lights were colored, in order, red, orange,
yellow, green, blue, violet.

I'm getting frustrated with the spotlight aspect, because I can't seem to get it
to reflect off glass the same way a point light does, which is why I had to
adjust the glass' texture.  I'm sure it's me, but I can't seem to get the hang
of aiming it correctly, and if I assign the spotlight as part of an object
(such as inside the parabola of a flashlight) all rules for positioning the
thing seem to fly out the window... nothing makes sense.  Oh well, practice,
practice...




