Some great work here, especially the background. The pier, waves and sand
are all perfect, and anyone who's been to Daytona would recognize the tire
tracks in the sand as very accurate, a nice touch.

The aged photo look is very well done, and important to stress the old
technology aspect of the image, as many people wouldn't recognize just
how old the Bluebird is. It was a lot of work to create the sepia colors
within the rules of the IRTC, and it was nice to read the description of
the process and see the color images. Personally I think the rule is
very limiting and would be glad to see it go, but I think I'm probably
in the minority there.

I feel the Bluebird itself could have used a few more details, or some
additional textures that might make it look more real, to place it in
the setting more solidly. One comment complained that the vehicle wasn't
to scale, but it looks good to me.

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Renderdog wrote:
>Some great work here, especially the background. The pier, waves and sand
>are all perfect, and anyone who's been to Daytona would recognize the tire
>tracks in the sand as very accurate, a nice touch.
>
>The aged photo look is very well done, and important to stress the old
>technology aspect of the image, as many people wouldn't recognize just
>how old the Bluebird is. It was a lot of work to create the sepia colors
>within the rules of the IRTC, and it was nice to read the description of
>the process and see the color images. Personally I think the rule is
>very limiting and would be glad to see it go, but I think I'm probably
>in the minority there.

I for one wasn't convinced by the sepia tint.  To me it looked like a
full-colour world where everything happened to be coloured in shades of
brown.  I appreciate the effort that went into the effect, but it just
doesn't work for me.  Specifically what I find stands out is the greys in
the shadows.  In a real sepia tone photo these areas would receive a brown
wash.  I would have preferred leaving it in colour, or in greyscale if I
really wanted to achieve an antique photo look.  The grain and black
smudges look good however, like an old print that was improperly stored in
a stack of old photos.

>I feel the Bluebird itself could have used a few more details, or some
>additional textures that might make it look more real, to place it in
>the setting more solidly. One comment complained that the vehicle wasn't
>to scale, but it looks good to me.

I was the one who thought the car was out of scale and on second thought I'm
going to have to take that comment back.  The car seemed far too big to me
compared to the size of the driver but after reading the text file again I
see that the car was indeed that huge, I missed that bit of information the
first time, not to mention that I'm more familiar with the metric system
and the artist gave the dimensions in feet.  This brings up another point
though, the readme file is too long.  It is easily double the length of the
next longest text file and most of the techniques explained were pretty
standard fare.  The artist should have edited it down to focus on the
special features of the image, such as the sepia tint and perhaps the
heightfield waves, and if he felt that further explanations were in order
then he should have created a "making of" web page and included a link to
that.  There were 84 other images to look at, after all.

Not to sound too negative and end on a positive note, I must say I like the
use of a heightfield to model the surf.  That was quite clever and the
results are good.  I also like the reflective surface on the sand at the
shoreline.  I bet the tide had just gone out, perfect for skimboarding!

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On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 15:55:28 EDT, "Copper Pin"
<Cop### [at] hotmailcom> said:

>This brings up another point
>though, the readme file is too long.  It is easily double the length of the
>next longest text file and most of the techniques explained were pretty
>standard fare.  The artist should have edited it down to focus on the
>special features of the image, such as the sepia tint and perhaps the
>heightfield waves, and if he felt that further explanations were in order
>then he should have created a "making of" web page and included a link to
>that.  There were 84 other images to look at, after all.

I thought it was better to be too verbose than not enough.  "Making
of" web pages are a good idea, but the web is an ephemeral thing.  One
of my pet peeves are tantalizing messages that say everything you want
to know is at some web site, only to find the link is dead.

>Not to sound too negative and end on a positive note, I must say I like the
>use of a heightfield to model the surf.  That was quite clever and the
>results are good.  I also like the reflective surface on the sand at the
>shoreline.  I bet the tide had just gone out, perfect for skimboarding!

Actually, the tide had just gone out.  I was curious about the height
of the tide so I did some investigating and figured that the runs must
have been timed to coincide with low tide.  Based on the angle of the
shadows in my reference photos, I estimated the runs to have taken
place around 2 in the afternoon.  I couldn't find tidal records that
went back that far, but I was able to determine the time of the
moonrise that day.  Comparing it to current tide charts, low tide
would have been around 2 pm that day.  There also happened to be a new
moon a couple of days before so not only was it low tide, but also the
most extreme lowest tide possible.

---
Jet Jaguar
Visit my crappy home page at http://home.att.net/~chmilnir/
MSTie #54297

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On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 10:43:42 EDT, "Renderdog" <slo### [at] hiwaaynet> said:

>Some great work here, especially the background. The pier, waves and sand
>are all perfect, and anyone who's been to Daytona would recognize the tire
>tracks in the sand as very accurate, a nice touch.

The pier was almost an afterthought.  I originally had the car running
the opposite direction, but the background was too plain.  I turned it
around and located it near the pier just to add some interest to the
backdrop.

>The aged photo look is very well done, and important to stress the old
>technology aspect of the image, as many people wouldn't recognize just
>how old the Bluebird is. It was a lot of work to create the sepia colors
>within the rules of the IRTC, and it was nice to read the description of
>the process and see the color images. Personally I think the rule is
>very limiting and would be glad to see it go, but I think I'm probably
>in the minority there.

The sepia tinting is an idea I've wanted to try since the "Worlds
Within Worlds" round, this was finally a topic that it fit well.
There's a second reason to do the sepia tint this way that made it
really the best solution.  In order to get the black "surface" dirt,
the underlying image would have to be tinted first.  Otherwise the
dirt would also be colorized by any post-process tinting unless I
rendered the two separately and compositioned them together.  Still, I
can't help to think there is an easier way to accomplish the effect
programmatically in the SDL, but I'm just not that skilled with the
language.

>I feel the Bluebird itself could have used a few more details, or some
>additional textures that might make it look more real, to place it in
>the setting more solidly. One comment complained that the vehicle wasn't
>to scale, but it looks good to me.

One thing I wish I could have done was do something to make the rivets
stand out some more and still look realistic.

---
Jet Jaguar
Visit my crappy home page at http://home.att.net/~chmilnir/
MSTie #54297

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Renderdog <slo### [at] hiwaaynet> wrote in message
news:web.3ea4039d2e3b3130f58667690@news.povray.org...
> Some great work here, especially the background. The pier, waves and sand
> are all perfect, and anyone who's been to Daytona would recognize the tire
> tracks in the sand as very accurate, a nice touch.
>
> The aged photo look is very well done, and important to stress the old
> technology aspect of the image, as many people wouldn't recognize just
> how old the Bluebird is.


I really liked the old time look to this, not just in the coloring, but to
me it had that "feel" of old photos. The composition & background reminded
me of something out of an old magazine.

I thought the sky and water needed to blend more at the horizon, or maybe a
slight focal blur.  I think ocean horizons are difficult to do correctly
anyway, because in real life in bright sunlight the horizon is either
brighter than either the water or sky due to reflection, or the water and
sky just run together and the horizon isn't discernable.

A good job though, and right on topic. I was watching the Brazilian Grand
Prix on tv, and everytime they would show a lap speed, I'd think of this
image.

RG

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Copper Pin wrote:

> 
> I for one wasn't convinced by the sepia tint.  To me it looked like a
> full-colour world where everything happened to be coloured in shades of
> brown.  

And of course, the technique used to try and get the effect, while 
inventive, was doomed.  But the failed attempt, for his purposes, was at 
a minimum, good enough, and on reflection, its effect as you describe, 
*of recreating a world of sepia tints*, is just what he was trying to 
do. That lost world of the Bluebird, now enshrined in sepia is just 
where Bob wants to take us.

Bob was trying to create the appearance of a sepia tinted and aged 
photograph in a single pass, something raytracing is uniquely not 
equipped for.  A two-step process which first created the photographic 
object, then made a tracing of it directly might have been more 
successful.  Still, the method he did use is a highly entertaining 
experiment.  By sampling from a pretraced and externally tinted image 
based on his scene, then recoloring his 3d scene to match, he did 
acknowledge the stepped process that would be necessary.  But instead of 
reproducing an accurate record of a photograph, he may have entered what 
has been termed the "metareality" of a photograph.  That point where its 
physicality is indistinguishable from its illusion.  Now I realize that 
Bob was not trying to engage such an inquiry; he was just trying to find 
a way to marry the concept of "old" with an example of "technology". 
But what he did do was challenge the limits of raytracing, and opened 
some possibly interesting doors in the process.  I applaud his bold attempt.

The result makes me think about what's elemental: sea, sky, the near 
geometric plane of the beach, sepia tones, and of course,... speed.

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