Hi.
First of all, congratulations Mr. & Mrs. Dolt.
(wish I had the same support here :-)
And of course, congrats to everyone.
Now the post:


3e831512$1@news.povray.org...
> > I notice one of the comments suggested a radio tower instead of a farm
in
> > the background. I'm not sure that would gain much, and might be a
> > distraction.

IMO a rusty and old radio tower with some falling wires would be a very
good idea. The concept, wich is really great as it is, would be even better.
I don't think that the radio tower should replace the farm. The farm and all
the things in the background, give the "reallity" component to the image,
wich, by the way, is very surrealistic (sure you'll never see a graveyard
like this).

> > Of course the radios themselves are great, and they're so many of them!
I
> > really like the plasticy-wood surface of the radios, very realistic
> > looking, and it gives the image a classy feel.
>
> I spent countless hours working on the textures and finishes. Even so, I'm
> not 100% satisfied.  Maybe 90%.  I'm going from memory, but I believe the
> wood texture was a granite and bozo texture stretched out to look like a
> wood grain.  Then I overlayed a stretched agate pattern on top of that,
for
> the color variation.  I tried using the woods.inc, but eventually
abandoned
> it, and made my own.  Some of them also had turbulence added.  Then I
used,
> "warp {repeat 2*x flip <1,0,0> " to flip-flop the textures to look like
wood
> veneer.

The radios are simply pefect, great modelling, texturing and lightning.
Great idea to make all different and so high detailed.
It's obvious you spent a lot of time working on them..
But I think the contrast with the grass (wich seems a bit dry to me,
at least compared with the one I have where I live), it's too hard.
If the grass would be, perhaps, more glossy, or more green or
would have a less "dusty" look.
Now that I look the image once again I see that the grass behind
the first radio shadow is OK. It's only with the foreground
grass that I get that sensation.

> Some things that went wrong...
> * Lighting:  It's too dark, imho, and I ran out of time before I could
> figure out what to do about it.

Not in my monitor. I don't see it dark (maybe I'll have to check
my monitor...)

> Other thoughts...
> Overall, I tried to do this without using things like Poser, X-frog,
> pre-built models etc.  Probably because I don't own any of those things.
;-)
> But more to the point, since I don't own those things, I wanted to show
> what's possible using just POV-Ray, and a few other simple, mostly free
> tools.  I think some of the scoring may have taken that into account, but
> that's just my feeling.

Sure it's fine to do everything only with pov, but for certain things you
have to be a master. Human modelling is one of those things.
AFAIK, the better works I have seen were made with blobs, and I can
only say that of works made by H.E. Day and Lorenzo Quintana Juez,
though I have to mention Anto Matkovic and Gena with sPatch and
Hamapatch. The man walking the dog in the "other" Gena's Loneliness
entry is fabulous.
I know I can't make that (and even if I could I don't have the time), but
I want a man in my scene. So I use poser. When I have wanted to have
a tree in my scenes, I've used Gilles' Tree or Sonya's Tree. When I've
needed grass, the Gilles one. Lens Flare, a city, a galaxy? Chris Colefax.
I could continue this way but I think you know what I mean.
The goal is to get the image in your brain. I model what I can model
and I try to use the better tool for each. And when there is something
that only can be done with pov, I use pov.
 I hope I haven't started a war flame because of this, my bigger
respect for the people that only use pov and a keyboard. It's
really amazing what you get (JRG keeps me shocked).

> Finally, I'd like to thank my wife, Angela (aka Mrs. Dolt), for supporting
> me on this.  It can get lonely coming home from work and spending the next
5
> hours working on an IRTC entry.  Lonely for both of us.

It's true. Another YKYHBRTTL. Then the prize goes to you both.
Congratulations again.
Bye.

Txemi Jendrix
http://www.txemijendrix.com

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