My project was done in POV-Ray and is the Rosebud Opera House located on Highway 840 about 100km northeast of calgary. Why did I choose this as my Alberta landmark? Because google said so.
The real thing:
Looking at the accomplishments of some professionals with POVRay I had hopes of making a fairly good looking picture. Needless to say my picture didnt turn out quite as good as I expected but I think it turned out pretty good for a first attempt at it in POV-Ray.
Steps:
-Basic Building shapes (roof made with the insection of 3 boxes, 2 had a bumpy texture to create a texture for the roof)
-The awning shape (its the intersection of 3 boxes)
-Large awning
-Windows (somewhat reflective)
-Front corridor was cut out of the building
-The Front door (wood texture plus shiny door handles)
-Side Panels were added to the side of the building
-Building sign (used a POV-Ray cmd that actually lets you select a font and renders the words for you)
Time Spent:
-I spent roughly 10 hours doing Pov-Ray tutorials
-3 hours of this time was learning to draw basic shapes and translate and such.
-2 hours or so playing with lighting, its actually a very intersting topic.
-The rest of the time was spent on little things such as playing with the reflection,
ambient. diffuse and specular values for objects. As well as a little bit on applying
and making your own textures.
-The time i spent on the project was considerable but most of the time was spent arranging objects
to intersect just right and positioning them in the picture. More time was spent on applying
textures such as the textures on the wood window grates and wood door, shiny letters on the
theatre and the glass. None of this sounds hard by itself and I'm sure any competent POV-Ray
user would laugh at the ridiculous amounts of time I spent with this picture but it took alot of
time to learn and complete my first picture with it.
Difficult parts:
-Building things to scale. You'll notice in my picture everything looks roughly the same
(hopefully) but when compared to the orignal the building seems taller and not quite as wide.
-Textures. It's amazingly hard, or so it seems, to find a good texture for every surface in
a picture, many of my textures are found in POVRay library and the rest were made by me.
-Lighting. POV-Ray has dozens of different kinds of light, the kind the tutorial suggested
for the most realistic effects was area lighting because in makes shadows appear less sharp.
My light is an area light and the shadows do look a little more realistic but not perfect.
So well my project isn't the perfect likeness I once envisioned I am still rather pleased with it.