Jim Charter <jrc### [at] aolcom> wrote in message
news:3f358a4e$1@news.povray.org...
> Conceptually the mystery is compounded.  Unexplainable
> lights appear at the site of a megalithic stone circle which
> itself has never been fully explained. Related aspects of
> the supernatural or the natural?
>
> Subtlely the scene plays with our sense of what's natural.
> The atmospheric sky is darkened like smoke.  Some
>   trees stand in unnaturally shallow files beyond the
> stones. The sparse folliation and blossoms suggest spring,
> yet in the foreground the grass is long and lush.  The sun
> is low in the sky, yet its light is cool like moonlight.
> The overall harmony is in the dissonent
> green/purple/orange register. The scene is beautiful.
> The colors are saturated, challenging our senses.
> The ancient stones seem at one with the earth but they
> result from the hands of man. But where from are the
> floating lights?
>

Damn Jim, you sure do write nice reviews!  Thanks!

This scene was pretty straightforward, I knew basically what I wanted at the
start (rare for me...) so just started putting it together.  The stones I
wanted to look old, and I wanted good control over their shape and erosion,
so that's why I used Bryce for them as I'm very familiar with Bryce, and
it's terrain editor has some useful filters for this. The other reason for
using Bryce was that rather than using the grayscale directly from the
terrain editor, I could do a 16 bit render of it with some rotations &
transformations that the editor didn't allow, which let me control the
shapes even more. The POV procedural texture set them off well, I was quite
happy with the way they came out.

..."Some trees stand in unnaturally shallow files beyond the stones... "
That was my failed attempt at depicting the geologic faults... I couldn't
think of a way to show a fault. The edge of the hills and the lines of trees
were supposed to represent the faultline, maybe a crack in the earth filled
over the ages by a small stream, the stream providing water for the trees,
but the stream idea just didn't come through very well.


Greg McCarter's comment really echoed my own thoughts on the weak points;
the lack of depth to the lights which I tried to alleviate by showing their
influence on the nearby stones, and the lack of leafy plants to break up the
expanse of grass.  I was trying to get something in Povtree & in Plantstudio
for that; I wanted some kind of brambles to wrap around the stones, but
never got anything I liked, so left it out. :-(

The Terragen sky & the fog really make the scene. I was very pleased with
the warm, dusky atmosphere. Of my own images, this is my personal favorite
just because of the ambiance.

RG

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