TITLE: BIG TOY
NAME: Dave Merchant
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: kosh@nesys.com
WEBPAGE: www.nesys.com
TOPIC: CHILDHOOD
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: big_toy.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.01, Windows 95

TOOLS USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.01, Adobe Photoshop 3.04

RENDER TIME: 
    44 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium-120, 16mb RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Childhood - my childhood to be exact.

This image documents the single most memorable event of my childhood - a close 
encounter with a steam dinosaur.

In this scene, about 1955, my kid brother and I watched a big steam crane / pile
driver, 
"Driver No. 3", building a local water intake plant. I_ve changed the facts
slightly -
my dad worked during the week, and never got to see this machine when it was
fired up,
but it saved me having to come up with some women_s clothes and finishing my
blobs
human model for our mom, who was providing transportation that day. We were
there
because the water plant was being built right next to the swimming beach - note
the
lake in the background. Funny thing - I didn_t get in the water much that day!
I was about 11 or 12 years old at the time.

Since that time, the great beach has completely eroded away, and waves break
against
the valve building being constructed here.

An unusual childhood? Not really. Prior to the sixties, computers, video games,
and
television, many kids, including myself, spent their free time at construction
sites,
railroad stations, and firehouses. There was always plenty to see, and if you
were
lucky, you might find a "steam rig" like this one for your listening pleasure.
Back then, this was a rather typical childhood.

The atmosphere was different, prior to the lawsuit explosion. Workers expected
and 
welcomed visitors, and were happy to show off their work. In my case, I rode
many 
locomotives (some steam), ran a couple of them, was in railroad yards,
roundhouses, 
and on working docks, and was allowed up on and operated many kinds of 
construction equipment. My son has done many of the same things.

When there was nothing going on, the dirt piles were ideal for war, cowboys, or
king of 
the hill, or to just climb up and look down. Was it dangerous? Perhaps we had
better 
survival skills then. Were we standing too close? Like I said, it was a
different time.

The crane is placing timber "floats" to avoid sinking into the soft sand. The
engineer is 
reaching up for the main hoist throttle, while the ground man signals the moves
to be 
made. In the background, a rough wooden form is being completed for the valve 
house, which is the only visible manifestation of a large underground and
underwater 
construction project. The fireman is out on the walkway, since it_s hot in the
cab, and 
the intermittent work being done this day doesn_t require constant firing.
Supplying 
steam to a pile driver was a different matter! We also got to watch that
operation, 
earlier in the day. Note the kitchen chairs on the veranda.

This machine was as much an auditory experience as visual, as it had all the
sounds of
a medium sized steam locomotive. The forced draft on the boiler was more or
less
continual, with the air compressor (the crane apparently had air assisted
controls)
providing intermittent punctuation. The connecting rod brasses on the hoist
engine were
rather worn, so the engine clanked when it ran. Just about right for an
impressionable
11 year old kid - I can still hear it.

The sinister looking black framework laying in the background is a steam pile
driver - 
for some reason, they were usually an intense black color.

This machine was too big to be transported by road, which was no problem - the 
company moved it by barge.

Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company is still in business, with the same color 
scheme, but more modern machines.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


- ABOUT THE MODEL

This model is a reconstruction based on limited information and 40 year old
memories.
From specific design details, including the large horizontal boiler, starboard
side
operator_s position, and the need for a ground man to operate the steering
clutches,
it was tentatively identified as a Bucyrus or Bucyrus-Erie machine, in the 50-B
to
65-B range. But there is considerable uncertainty to this - many companies in
the US
were capable of building a machine like this, and in fact GLD+D had repair shops
which
would have been up to the task of building one from scratch. Also, nearly every
one of
these machines was heavily customized, drawing from an extensive catalog of
standard
modules.

Many good photos were available of several B-E 50-B shovels, but these differ 
somewhat from crane / pile driver configurations. Additionally, extensive photos
were 
available of a large custom built steam crane / pile driver at a museum, and of
many 
larger barge mounted steam cranes that continued in use until at least 1990.

The known details were combined, and sized to fit. Compared to the 50-B shovel,
the 
machinery deck was lengthened and widened to accommodate a large 3 drum winch 
instead of the single hoist drum of a shovel. The undercarriage length and width
were 
increased in a typical adaptation - on shovels, a compact footprint is desired,
at the 
expense of stability. Additionally, the A-frame was made higher for operation
with 
longer booms. The hoist drums are large, to spool a great length of cable for
caisson, 
tunnel, and dredge use. The fairleads in the A-frame to redirect the hoist
cables are an 
archaic feature that were known to be present on the subject machine. When I
started 
to work out the geometry, it became obvious that the flat winch deck required
their use 
to prevent the cables from hitting the other drums or boom. The steep arch of
the 
corrugated iron roof is typical.

The use of large bogies in the undercarriage is questionable - this was a
hallmark of 
large B-E machines of the time, but I think I remember that the machine had a 
conventional modern rail frame undercarriage. The boom hoist rigging is
simplified on
the model. Also, with research, it may turn out that the boiler diameter on the
model
is a bit small. I will probably change these items someday.

An odd feature was a large brass hose outlet on the center base - apparently,
the base 
served as a water tank.

Due to the uncertainties, and the potential of obtaining better information in
the future, 
everything is parameterized. This also allows animation.

- ABOUT THE IMAGE

This setup is in POV-Ray 3.01, all CSG. No modelers were used.

I made some textures in Photoshop, but used standard POV procedural textures 
whenever possible. The sky, sand, lake, and wood grain are all standard POV
textures, 
which I really like.

The scene is a bit busy, but I made an attempt at a reasonable composition
consistent
with the actual events. I tried to use the junk in the foreground and the patch
of empty
sand in the center to pull the eye toward the kids and their dad.

There are quite a few shadowless fill lights, plus the sun. Lighting isn_t my
strong point.
The overall light level is high, as it was at the beach, due to the reflective
sand.
The sand at this beach was actually very light, almost white, but I darkened it
for the
image, to keep from washing out everything else. I work with a monitor which has
great
saturation, so the image may be a bit too light on some monitors.

The steam is just a basic "spherical dust" halo, stretched, with all the quality

parameters set as low as I could get away with. Contrary to popular belief, a
coal fired 
boiler normally didn_t put out much black smoke, unless it was being fired
heavily, or a 
photographer requested it.

The lake is simple turbulence, stretched lengthwise.

The caterpillar treads and hoist gears were rendered solid in POV, but then
turned into 
GIFs in Photoshop, and applied as textures in the final rendering.

I developed the people specifically for this scene, using vector math. They are

currently rather basic, but fully articulated, so they can be used in
animations. I expect 
that they_ll be better by the next time they_re used. Via a render-time option,
they can 
be rendered with clothes, from geometric shapes, or using blobs for people in
shorter 
outfits, although I don_t have any clothes yet for the blobs version. Clothes
and faces 
are textures created in Photoshop.

A tricky part was in articulating the hoist and boom cables via vector math, so
that the 
boom and hooks could be positioned and animated. The lacing of the tapered parts
of 
the boom was also interesting.

I had quite a bit of trouble with moire on the corrugated iron roof and the
cables on the
hoist drums, but didn't want to get into 3 day renders, so I finally just
minimised it
as much as possible. Object count is 1648.

I wasted some effort developing a fast-rendering tree model with multiple
vegetation 
styles, and then found there was no room in the composition to use any of them.
So I 
used a few for the typical scrub vegetation normally found on beaches. The plant

model is 2 nested hollow spherical shells, with a transparent leaf pattern GIF
texture 
(done in Photoshop, of course).

I used Photoshop to convert the image to JPEG, but did not do any other
corrections.

Additional images and background material are available at my web site: 
WWW.NESYS.COM/3d.html. I didn_t write a ZIP archive, but would be happy to 
discuss any questions.

As for the origin of the title, take a look at WWW.BIGTOY.COM, another
organization I 
belong to.

The trademark of Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company is acknowledged.
The trademark of Bucyrus - Erie Company is acknowledged.


