Raytraced pictures index

For a while I have made a small hobby of designing 3D graphics to be rendered by POV-Ray, a popular raytracing program. The scenes are described using a scene description language and then POV-Ray generates a 2D view onto the scene.

You can see that I am not much of an artist, but I would be pleased to hear anything you have to say about the pictures if you feel like writing. All pictures are copyright and may be used only for personal viewing.

3candles.jpeg [small] A first experiment in using the POV-Ray 3 halo feature to make flames.

boat_c2.jpeg [small] A glass yacht sailing in front of a brilliant sunset. The yacht was modelled in Cyber Sculpt on an Atari TT. The picture was in fact rendered on an Atari TT; this took a long time. I was going to enter the picture in the IRTC but it was only about 70% rendered by the deadline!

calc.jpeg [small] I was rather pleased with this picture, which includes a very nice compass drawn in Cyber Sculpt on an Atari TT. It is an exact copy of an actual compass that I have. The calculator was also designed in Cyber Sculpt, and is a careful copy of an actual one. The wood grain is scanned from an actual piece of wood, with the ruler markings overlayed on it. It is rather sad, therefore, that I lost this whole scene along with several others. This image is the only copy I have. It was rendered in Phoenix 2. The textures are poor, but that is a limitation of the renderer.

column.jpeg [small] Sample output from my POV-Ray column design. Various parameters are available that control the type of column produced.

fuji.jpeg [small] This picture was designed for the cover of the Atari Computing magazine, where it was used. Ironically, it was designed and rendered entirely in 3D Studio MAX on a PC - the only time I have used that software. Sadly I lost the original design and files, so this is a scan from a print, hence the low quality. The picture is, of course, of an Atari fuji logo made of stone.

globe.jpeg [small] A simple globe of the world, except this one has a picture of the real earth on it rather than a map. I had designed another picture of a similar sort, which was, I think, much better than this one. Alas, it was another victim of my major backup failure. I still have a print of it, though, which I have now scanned and it appears below.

globe2.jpeg [small] This is the other globe picture referred to above. The quality is poor because it is scanned from a print - the only copy of this image that I have.

plant.jpeg [small] A strange kind of cactus plant which I have seen. This is in fact an almost exact copy of the actual cactus and its pot (not a very nice one). I was rather pleased with the soil, which is a conglomeration of spheres and a clever texture. Each set of cactus "leaves" is a small triangle mesh entered directly in POV-Ray. I have a macro which creates whole branches, with configurable amount of twist, width etc. This picture looks much too dark and rather poor on monitors that are not properly adjusted...

sga_pp.jpeg [small] A 3D extension of the Sierpinski Gasket, enclosed in a glass globe. The Sierpinski Gasket is composed of a large number of spheres automatically placed. The background hills were made with gforge.

spiral.jpeg [small] A glassy spiral rendered in POV-Ray. Composed of 1000 spheres and lit with three area lights, it took 88 hours of CPU time to render, but I think the result was worth it. The colours seen on the ground reflect the light sources.

sundial.jpeg [small] The sundial consists of a height field draw in a vector editor (Kandinsky on an Atari TT if I recall) and a gnomon made with Cyber Sculpt, then put onto a pedestal described in POV-Ray and rendered.

vaseros2.jpeg [small] A vase or jug of roses designed in Cyber Sculpt and rendered in Phoenix 2 on an Atari TT. Phoenix 2 is not very good, although if you fight with it enough, it is passable for simple scenes. Cyber Sculpt, on the other hand, is one of the best modellers I have ever used, and I still find it easier to use in many ways than the newer, more sophisticated modellers that are now available.

volcano.jpeg [small] This picture came from playing with hf-lab (the successor to gforge). I ended up with a volcano crater-like shape.