TITLE: The Artist's House
NAME: Claire Amundsen Schaeffer
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: webmaster@freegraphics.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.wockyjivvy.com/art/
TOPIC: Ruins
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: cas_arth.jpg
ZIPFILE: cas_arth.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.1g

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray
        Gilles Tran's Fabulous Tree Macro
         http://www.mediaport.net/Artichaud/Tran/english/gtmaine.htm
        Rick Bono's Geodesic Dome Maker
         http://www.cris.com/~rjbono/html/domes.html
        PaintShop Pro (signature and heightfield image map)


RENDER TIME: 
    1 hour, 24 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    Celeron, 500 MHZ


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


"The Artist's House"

The home of an artist in search of a medium -- he has tried painting, pottery,
basketweaving, wildly colored furniture, and the decorative geodesic hanging
domes (all can be seen in the picture).  Sadly, he has never been financially
successful and eventually turns to his dream -- creating replications of all
the great ruins. But at this point in his life he is out of money. So he
cannibalizes his house -- using siding, rail posts, anything he can to recreate
the great ruins... and in so doing, creates his greatest work, the ruin of his
own home.

Ruins included in the pic (besides the artist's house -- starting from the lower
left corner and working clockwise):
The Colosseum (created primarily from pieces of the rail posts and blue trim);
the beginnings of a Tinglit totem pole (created from one of the columns of the
house and scraps of siding); the Temple of Abul Simpel (second floor porch,
created from columns and railings); the Parthenon (on top of the gazebo,
created from rail posts and scraps); Stonehenge (lower right corner, created
from the decorative lattice pieces below the porch); Easter Island heads (in
front of the gazebo; created from siding); and a Mayan Temple (created from
rail posts and scrap).


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


This image is made up almost entirely of primitives and simple CSGs -- cubes,
spheres, and torii for the most part (exception being the baskets, vases,
trees, and domes).  The ground is a CSG (difference), a heightfield with
spheres making holes/puddles, with a plane beneath, showing through the
"puddles". There is not a lot fancy in this work -- just lots of tedium in
placing several thousand objects.

The only image maps used in the piece were for the heightfields (the dirt on the
steps are also heightfields).  Any other "special effect" (such as the peeling
paint) was done strictly with POV textures.  The peeling paints are all
variations on one layered texture -- scaled, rotated, and translated on each
piece.

The zip file includes all the textures used in the file, the scene file stripped
down (it was fairly large) to the ground (includes lights and camera settings),
and the image map used for the ground heightfield.

Not live at the time of this writing, but possibly by the time you read this,
http://www.freegraphics.com/arthouse
 -- a link to detailed images made along the way showing the progression of this
piece (at one time it was pink ;)

Special Thanks:
-- to the members posting on the POV-Ray news server and their help with outdoor
lighting suggestions
-- to Pete Schaeffer, my best critic
-- and to Elizabeth Pomada and Michael Larsen, editors of the book "America's
Painted Ladies: The Ultimate Celebration of Our Victorians" \ this book served
as a great source of inspiration in the construction of the house and the
"decoratives" added to the house.