TITLE: The Perfect Shot
NAME: Tim Soderstrom
COUNTRY: United States of America
EMAIL: tigerhawk@stic.net
WEBPAGE: http://www.moocowproductions.org
TOPIC: Toys & Games
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: bowling.jpg
ZIPFILE: bowling.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Pov-Ray 3.6.1 (Gentoo Version)

TOOLS USED: 
    Gimp2 (Image Converstion, Title, Framing)

RENDER TIME: 
    27 42 06 - Running in background on my workstation, hence
it is not a benchmark time.

HARDWARE USED: 
    AMD Athlon-XP 1800+ with 512MB RAM running Gentoo (Kernel
2.6.9)

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

The perfect shot. The one that when that ball leaves your hand you
know that it is destined to be a strike. All that is left to wait
for the ball to sail down the lane and strike the pins in the most
perfect manner for what seems like an eternity. Yet an eternity which
is over in an instant, as the ball effortlessly collides with the pins
in a violent crash. Strike! The Perfect Shot.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

This image was originally fathomed out of an idea for an unofficial
bowling website to keep track of stats and scores where I work. A
friend and I set out to make random bowling images. He used 3D Studio
MAX while I went with Pov-Ray. Over time we started adding more and
more elements to our images.

This particular image is quite simple: a lathe was used for the pins, and the
remaining objects are made using CSG. I find this image, however, to have quite
a bit of style despite being somewhat simple. The style really comes from the
composition of the image. This image really was a learning process as it has 
been sometime that I have worked in Pov-Ray. As a result, this image uses some 
relatively new features to me: focal blur and radiosity. Using both of these 
elements made render times shoot through the roof, but it is well worth the wait

(though I wish PVMPov could do radiosity to help cut the render-time down).

I also made use of a reflective floor complete with a glossy surface that I
created by using a normal map. It is barely visible with the blur, but it is 
there. If you look closely, you may notice that the reflection only occurs on
the wood slats (not the space in-between them). I did this partly because I was
having trouble combining textures and partly because I think it looks cooler. 

The shadows were created with an area light and the blue tint of the pins is
just a simple light above them. I tried really hard to make the pins have that
blue-white look like they do in a real bowling alley, though I never got it to
the level that I wanted.

All in all, I am very proud of my first IRTC entry. I'm not sure if it really
fits particularly well (though it is a game), but nonetheless it was extremely
fun to make; and it even taught me a little bit about patience :)

