Sky:
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- Used the standard approach. I specified a large hollow sky sphere
and then filled in with cloud pattern. The one I used was found in the
Povray tutorials at http://www.f-lohmueller.de/pov_tut/pov__eng.htm.
- This sky was specified with a thick layer of fog at the horizon. I
liked this effect but reduced the height of the layer.
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Ground:
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- I approached this the usual way - by defining a green plane, then
adding some texture to give it the feel of grass.
- Then ($#@!), I decided to try to add some surface texture by creating
an image map and a heightfield using the image map. For this, I basically
followed the instructions in the beginning tutorial at www.povray.org.
I got a "mat" that added some (not very good) texture but
I COULDNOT figure out how to extend this texture over the whole plain.
In the end I ditched it. I know there is a way but I ran out of time.
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Bell Tower:
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This is where I spent most of my rendering efforts.
- The base was constructed by intersecting a pyramid and a plane and
adding a texture to look like large rocks. (The shape of the base is
fine but the texture is not very good unfortunately).
- To form the cement platform, I specified a box sized exactly to sit
on the chopped-off pyramid.
- To get the cement texture, I used the "granite" colour,
then scaled it down, added a random element and increased the ambience
and diffusion to give it a light cement like colour.
- The stairs were created with two prisms for the end caps and a set
of boxes for each of the steps. The high ambience washed the vertical
definition in the steps and vertical part of the cap. To counteract
this, I created a vertical "skin" for each of the steps and
the cap and defined a slightly darker colour. This brought the definition
back!
- For the wood posts and the beam to "gong" the bell, I found
a grey-brown wood texture and created the appropriate box. I rotated
the wood grain for the horizontal items.
- The bell is a cylinder with an sphere in the top narrow end.. It is
a granite texture. Again, I really increased the ambience and diffusion
so it was not just a black blob. I added a tiny gray light in the roof
of the tower so the phong effect on the bell could be seen. There MUST
be a better way to do this but at least it does have a stone "look".
- The roof is the intersection of four planes constructed of many cylinders
arranged side by side.. I found an example of this on the web and then
modified it for my purposes. It may look a bit off kilter but it looked
the same way in the photograph of the bell tower I used as my reference.
I checked to make sure my roof was square on the uprights by moving
the camera around before I decided on this angle.
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Trees
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- Bleah! The trees. I went through four different modelling programs
before I found something that worked! The one I used is a macro based
modeller called MakeTree at http://www.oyonale.com/ressources/english/sources01.htm.
I made a set of include files for each tree which detailed each tree's
trunk, branches and foliage, and then made a few basic modifications
to the trees to make them look a bit more at home in the picture. This
particular tree-generating algorithm is quite fast but the others were
PAINFULLY slow!
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