TITLE: thestorm
NAME: Tom Ryan
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: headhunter_tr_ca@yahoo.com
WEBPAGE: A few, but none relevant.

TOPIC: Worlds Within Worlds
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: thestorm.jpg
ZIPFILE: thestorm.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1g


TOOLS USED: 
    sPatch, Mesh Compressor v 2.1.


RENDER TIME: 
    22 hours, 18 minutes, 2 seconds plus something like 18 minutes to
parse


HARDWARE USED: 
    PIII 900, 256 Mb RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Storm clouds are gathering on the horizon.

It's mid-afternoon. A group of chimpanzees has stopped at the edge of the forest
to rest. The forest that has been its world for generations. As is customary,
one member begins grooming another, brushing and cleaning off dirt and insects.
While cleaning his companion he is struck by the sight of two ticks - parasites
whose world is limited to the back of their unwilling host. It is here they are
born, eat, reproduce and die. Such a small world they inhabit. Not like his
boundless forest.

Over his shoulder, a younger member of the group is mesmerized by the horizon.
He wishes he could meet one of the hairless ones who live so far away. His
mother tells him to be careful what he wishes for. They did not live so close
in her mother's time. The day will come when his people will face the hairless
ones. She tells him that it will be all too soon, and she hopes she is not
there to see it. 

Undeterred, the youth dreams of that day. And when it comes, he wonders, how
will his world fit into theirs?

There's a storm brewing on the horizon...




DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


The intent in this image was, originally, to create a head without using Poser.
I decided to make it a chimpanzee head when the topic was announced. This image
is 100% Poser-free!

I will have to share any accolades, should any be forthcoming, with a number of
people: Chris Colefax for his Hair Growth Macro, Chris again with Warp(?) for
Mesh Compressor v 2.1, Mike Clifton for sPatch, Tom Aust for TOMTREE, Gilles
Tran for his Grass macros and Anto Matkovic, whose sPatch head tutorial
provided the inspiration for the head.

Note that I had to make a minor modification to Chris's pcm.mcr. The the
variable 'C' collided with a local variable with the same name in TOMTREE.inc,
and since pcm.mcr only used it three times and TOMTREE.inc used it a whole lot
more, I decided to rename the variable C_Alt in pcm.mcr.

The heads (actually only one head), bodies (one again) , ears, hands and arms
(again...shared) are all modeled with sPatch and all but the hands converted to
meshes with the Mesh Compressor out of which the hair grows. The foreground
trees were created with TOMTREE. I had originally intended to use Chris's Hair
Growth macro for the grass as well, but (probably through ineptness on my part)
some conflicts between the parameters for the hair and the grass caused some
pretty wild results. So, rather than try to figure out why, I tried Gilles
Tran's grass and it worked out just fine.

The clouds are layers of planes and the city is a whack of boxes.  The ticks,
eyes and teeth are primitives. There is a ground fog in the valley to give the
perception of distance and dust. The valley and hills are a height field and
the distant forest is a separate height field.

Lighting consists of a bright point light to represent the sun and a series of
area spot lights and point lights to illuminate the chimps in the forest while
not washing out the dappled light from the sun through the trees above.

I ran out of time to come up with a satisfactory texture (or perhaps normal) for
the skin. A 22 hour render tends to limit the number of times one can
try...since I needed the trees and the 'production' lighting to see the proper
results.




