This is my first big povray project, so be gentle with me :-)

It took me about five weeks of evenings and weekends, mostly because
I am learning as I go.

It's also a blatant cheat in two ways.  Firstly the "set design" is't
mine, it's a direct copy of a drawing from one of the "Sandman" comic
books "The Friendly Ones" If I knew the artist's name I would credit
him.  Secondly it's actually a composite of two povray images, the night
sky was done separately an then merged with the throne room using the
Gimp (a Unix Photoshop equivalent) but I honestly don't think there was
any way to achieve the same effect with just povray alone.
The stained glass windows were also drawn separately using xfig (a Unix
CAD package).

Things I think worthy of note: The trig to do the stairs. Sphere sweeping
arrays of spheres to simulate a curving prism sweep for the window frames.
Use of random blobs to generate the "statues" (The original had classic
greek-style marble nudes but I have neither the time nor the talent to
attempt that yet).


-- 
Gee batman, is there *anything* you don't understand?
Yes Robin, several things.

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Attachments:
Download 'sandman1.png' (503 KB)

Preview of image 'sandman1.png'

"Bill Hails" <bil### [at] europeyahoo-inccom> schreef in bericht
news:3e466504@news.povray.org...
> This is my first big povray project, so be gentle with me :-)
Ok, but you should learn when to use JPEG...  Look at this:
http://sad.studentenweb.org/sandman1.jpg
The same image, but about 7 times smaller in filesize.

> It took me about five weeks of evenings and weekends, mostly because
> I am learning as I go.
Those 5 weeks were worth it, it's a very nice image!

> It's also a blatant cheat in two ways.  Firstly the "set design" is't
> mine, it's a direct copy of a drawing from one of the "Sandman" comic
> books "The Friendly Ones" If I knew the artist's name I would credit
> him.  Secondly it's actually a composite of two povray images, the night
> sky was done separately an then merged with the throne room using the
> Gimp (a Unix Photoshop equivalent) but I honestly don't think there was
> any way to achieve the same effect with just povray alone.
I don't see why not... Don't underestimate POV-Ray :)

cu!
--
ZK AKA SaD
http://www.povplace.be.tf
"Use the instrumentpanel, Luke!"

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"Bill Hails" <bil### [at] europeyahoo-inccom> wrote in message
news:3e466504@news.povray.org...
> This is my first big povray project, so be gentle with me :-)

Can't. You posted a very large file for such a small image, so guess I'll be
first to complain.
;-)
Jpeg (jpg) is the preferred format for this group, even if compressed
lightly, since it produces much smaller files than png, bmp, tga.

The rendering is nice, the modelling better still. Not sure if the floor and
stair texturing should be as though carved from a single block of stone but
it works okay for this one I guess. If you were to improve on it though I'd
say go with individual texturing, randomly oriented, for each tile of floor
and step of stairs. By improve I only mean if the presentation were changed
from fantasy-like to realism.

There's something that bothers me about the lighting/ambience. Probably
because it is all so uniform. Light fading and spotlights work wonders. The
confusion to me is that I see that soft shadow of the stairs and yet the
statues don't seem to be lit by the same source, as well as the windows
looking as if a strong light is behind them and not causing shadows. Not
sure. Anyway, you probably get what I'm saying.

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hughes, b. wrote:

> "Bill Hails" <bil### [at] europeyahoo-inccom> wrote in message
> news:3e466504@news.povray.org...
>> This is my first big povray project, so be gentle with me :-)
> 
> Can't. You posted a very large file for such a small image, so guess I'll
> be first to complain.
> ;-)
> Jpeg (jpg) is the preferred format for this group, even if compressed
> lightly, since it produces much smaller files than png, bmp, tga.

I'm very sorry about that, I hadn't even looked at the image size, I just 
went on the WxH being similar to other images I've seen posted here. I'll
post jpegs in future.

> The rendering is nice, the modelling better still. Not sure if the floor
> and stair texturing should be as though carved from a single block of
> stone but it works okay for this one I guess. If you were to improve on it
> though I'd say go with individual texturing, randomly oriented, for each
> tile of floor and step of stairs. By improve I only mean if the
> presentation were changed from fantasy-like to realism.

Thanks!
yes, the whole point, I suppose, of using povray is to attempt 
photo-realism, I realise I'm a long way away from that at the moment. I'll
think about random tiling, maybe changing the parameters for the stone from 
tile to tile too.

> There's something that bothers me about the lighting/ambience. Probably
> because it is all so uniform. Light fading and spotlights work wonders.
> The confusion to me is that I see that soft shadow of the stairs and yet
> the statues don't seem to be lit by the same source, as well as the
> windows looking as if a strong light is behind them and not causing
> shadows. Not sure. Anyway, you probably get what I'm saying.

The throneroom part of the image had matte black walls (finish{ambient 0 
diffuse 0}) ready for the sky to be pasted in. There *is* a light source
behind the windows, and the background behind the windows is white. You can 
see the light source filtered through the windows and projected onto the 
floor and stairs. The intention is for it to look surreal, the windows are 
not physically possible. But you're right, the lighting is too flat, though
I'm not sure how to improve on it, maybe darken towards the bottom right,
and lighten the bottom of the stairs a little.

-- 
Gee batman, is there *anything* you don't understand?
Yes Robin, several things.

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There's a 1280x1024 (jpeg :-) of this at 
http://thyme.homelinux.net/sandman1.jpg
(1 mbit cable modem from my home box)

render time about 3 hours for the foreground, 3 minutes for the sky, on a 
Pentium III running Linux, plus 1 or 2 minutes manual labour glueing the 
two together afterwards.

I'm not sure about the sky (changed since the last posting), but the random 
statues look organic (almost erotic if you squint at them the wrong way :-)

apologies to all for the prevoius posting of a huge .png, I wasn't aware 
that pngs were that big wrt jpegs.

-- 
Gee batman, is there *anything* you don't understand?
Yes Robin, several things.

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"Bill Hails" <bil### [at] europeyahoo-inccom> wrote in message
news:3e466504@news.povray.org...

<snip>

but where's Merv?

(and I can't remember the artist either - Hemple? Vess?)

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Tom Melly wrote:

> "Bill Hails" <bil### [at] europeyahoo-inccom> wrote in message
> news:3e466504@news.povray.org...
> 
> <snip>
> 
> but where's Merv?

not to mention the speech bubbles :-)

> 
> (and I can't remember the artist either - Hemple? Vess?)

The edition I have credits all of the artists at the beginning,
Hempel and Vess are among them. I can't see any individual credits.

-- 
Gee batman, is there *anything* you don't understand?
Yes Robin, several things.

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