TITLE: The Sentinel
NAME: Tekno Frannansa
COUNTRY: UK
EMAIL: tek@evilsuperbrain.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.evilsuperbrain.com
TOPIC: Loneliness
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: sentinel.jpg
ZIPFILE: sentinel.zip
RENDERER USED: 


        POV-Ray for Windows v3.5



TOOLS USED: 


        POV-Ray editor
        Paint Shop Pro 5&6



RENDER TIME: 


         approx. 20 hours total (image rendered in several parts)



HARDWARE USED: 


        PentiumIII 550MHz 256MB RAM
        PentiumIV 2GHz 512MB RAM



IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


This somewhat surreal picture shows a lonely figure stood on an alien world,
with other barren worlds visible beyond.

This image was inspired by an abstract painting by my Mum. She's been an
abstract painter for a long time now, and her image "the sentinel" has been one
of my favourites for many years, so when I saw this topic that image
immediately came to mind.

On the pov newsgroups hughes b summed it up well as "A sort of organic versus
inorganic matter on a orb like the others in space amid some lifegiving light."
:)


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


This started out as a simple effort in visualising my interpretation of my mum's
original painting. The first version was knocked together in just a couple of
hours, and consisted of the 3 planets, with atmospheres, and a julia fractal as
a placeholder for the figure. The final scene had a lot of work put into
refining it, so I'll cover the main bits:

The atmosphere: This is a media using a function to describe it's density.
Originally it was a simple scattering media, and the density was exponential
(which I think is correct). In the final image the density is modified by a
granite pigment, and the atmosphere is now a type 5 media, which behaves partly
like a simple scattering media, but also gets a really nice glow around the
sun. A similar media is used on the other planets in the background.

The figure:        This was an attempt to get a surreal impression of a
human-like figure wrapped in a shroud. I contructed it from simple CSG and a
few julia fractals. I rendered a catalogue of 256 images of fractals with
different parameters, so that I could choose the ones I needed to construct the
figure.

The rocks: These are notable for being the only thing that's been added to the
scene after the first WIP! They're just intersections of 3 randomly rotated
cubes, randomly positioned and scaled, and with a simple agate pigment. I added
them because they "felt right", though I realise now that they work because
they contrast with the smooth curves of the figure, adding to the loneliness of
the piece.

And finally, I'd just like to explain the rendering of the final image: The
image has been compiled from 4 seperate renders. This is solely to spread
rendering load and to avoid using expensive blur settings on the whole image.
The final image is how it will look if you render the source provided. I also
resized the image to be 20% bigger because it was a little too small for my
liking but I don't have time to render a bigger version.

I hope you like it. Keep an eye on my website to see some work in progress
images from this scene sometime soon.

