Orchid XP v2 wrote:
> This is... er, wait... was GOING to be my entry for the IRTC. I've never
> entered before - and which the quality of this image, you can clearly
> see why.

Ok. At first look, I wasn't sure what should be ice. I did immediality
see what should be fire. Candlelight is darned hard thing to raytrace
realisticly - my first public try goes here:
http://www.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/2003-02-28/calcu.jpg

IIRC, it took me twothree weeks to create that candlelight and I
rendered it for 44 hours (something like half an hour with simple
light_source in the place of the flame...) with ~1,7GHz AMD Athlon
(XP2100+).

> Featuring:
> * Possibly the least believable wood texture *ever*. o__O

Ok, that's one merit :p. But where's that texture, what part should be
wood? :o

> * A pretty pathetic marble texture.

Ok.. where?

> * Ice crystals that look NOTHING LIKE ice.

True, they certainly don't look like ice, but still they got that something.

> * Snow that looks like rock.

Check this group few weeks back - there has been glorius examples of snow.

Besides the snow doesn't look like a rock - it looks more like brass :p.

> * A pittiful non-attempt at a flame.

Like I said, flame is a pain in the ass to model.

> Not content with all that, it took just under FOUR HOURS to render.

Is there something wrong with me, when I think that four hours ain't
much for an image containing area lights and radiosity.

> When my sister walked past and saw this, she said to me "hey, why did
> you draw a giant lump of poo on a stick?" (!!)

If I didn't get the ice on the first look, I certainly can't find a
giant lump of poo on a stick from that.

> But I drew this instead.

Ok, I can see why you're dissapointed, 'cause the image ain't yet what
you ment it to be. But there's three weeks left and you're allready made
a huge part, so go for it! There's allready something in the image that
made me stick to to look at it for a moment - and after that I looked
again. This is NOT the time to give up, but to start correcting the
annoying things. Try to get the image less yellow (a bit more red, AND
possibly add a bit of white, strongly fading light from the candle
(makes the snow better, while it gets lighter)) and make the ice
crystals more transparent. Modify the flame to be more drop-shaped (like
they usually are in real life). Go for it! Hush! Get to the core of the
code! Go!

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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