POV-Ray (Ray Tracing)

Biography

Jaime Vives Piqueres is currently working as a computer technician in Valencia (Spain). He is a 3D graphic artist and is addicted to Ray Tracing. Started as an hobby, Jaime spends all his free time working and creating POV-Ray (Persistence of Vision Raytracer is a high-quality, totally free tool for creating stunning three-dimensional graphics) scenes. In 1994, he first heard about ray tracing when he was exploring stereogram and figured out that POV-Ray served stereogram to create its images. And therefore, he installed POV-Ray and started exploring. Jaime believes that raytracing with POV-Ray was much cheaper and, the most important, more satisfying for him. Therefore, he gave up his musical hobby some years ago, and devotes all his free time is now for POV-Ray.

Artist Statement

None

What is Ray Tracing?

As stated in Wikipedia.org, Ray tracing is “a general technique from geometrical optics (behavior and properties of light) of modelling the path taken by light by following rays of light as they interact with optical surfaces.” It is used in the design of optical systems, such as camera lenses, microscopes, telescopes and binoculars. It works by tracing, in reverse, a path that could have been taken by a ray of light which would intersect the imaginary camera lens.

What is POV-Ray?

The Persistence of Vision Raytracer, or POV-Ray, is a ray tracing program available for a variety of computer platforms. It was originally based on DKBTrace (command line ray tracing program), written by David Kirk Buck and Aaron A. Collins. Jaime uses this program along with several image rendering programs to create his art.

Computing Process

Firstly, Jaime visualizes the real world and to observe the surroundings. One he gives the overall picture in his mind, he would use a text editor called SciTe to type the description of the objects using the POV-Ray language. Inputting the text file he created into the POV-Ray raytracer will help to render the scene description into a graphic format (file). The difficulty of understanding the information needed in the text file of the 3D description could be to its extreme but once one learns the necessary techniques and skills, it is only the “entering the data directly in 3D form.” Creating the objects of his art, Jaime recently started using Wings3D, which is very different and simple to use.
Jaime also uses The Gimp to create or retouch height and material maps used into the scene.

All that is done curently with an AMD 64 X2 3800+ and an Intel P4EE Dual Core, both running Linux Fedora Core 5, and using the latest versions of POV-Ray and MegaPOV, compiled from sources for each platform.

Jaime has included a set of features such as fake studio-like lighting equipment, like umbrelas and softboxes. It includes also several pre made arrangements for the most typical studio layouts, wich can be used directly with your own objects, or to render .hdr maps to light your already existing scenes. There is an example scene showing the usage of both methods, and also a tool scene to generate the .hdr maps. Jamie had been listed in POV-Ray Hall of Fame for his art using POV-Ray. On numerous occasions, he has been rated within the top 5 in the Internet Ray Tracing Competition (IRTC) where you can submit still images or animations. In 1999, Jaime created and submitted “Landmark” which was ranked 4th overall.

Here is a list of the different parts and the techniques used for each:

+ RIVER

Height_field + fog. used the technique of contiguous height_fields to build the long water surface. A underwater fog was added to make the transparence less uniform.

+ BRIDGE Height_fields.

The idea for the bridge was really obvious: the scene seemed to want it. Is done with 3 height_fields and some cylinders.


Source Code

// *** dangerous bridge (distant object = low detail) ***
union{
cylinder{<0,0,0>,<0,50,0>,2 translate <-255,0, 10>}
cylinder{<0,0,0>,<0,50,0>,2 translate <-255,0,-10>}
cylinder{<0,0,0>,<0,50,0>,2 translate <>}
cylinder{<0,0,0>,<0,50,0>,2 translate <>}
cylinder{<0,0,0>,<0,40,0>,2 translate -40*y rotate -45*z translate <-255,40, 10>}
cylinder{<0,0,0>,<0,40,0>,2 translate -40*y rotate -45*z translate <-255,40,-10>}
cylinder{<0,0,0>,<0,40,0>,2 translate -40*y rotate 45*z translate <>}
cylinder{<0,0,0>,<0,40,0>,2 translate -40*y rotate 45*z translate <>}
height_field{
tga "hf_bridg"
translate -.5
water_level 0.1
rotate -90*x
scale <512,128,20>
translate -10*y
}
height_field{
tga "hf_brid2"
translate -.5
water_level 0.1
rotate -90*x
scale <512,128,1>
translate <0,-10,10>
}
height_field{
tga "hf_brid3"
translate -.5
water_level 0.1
rotate -90*x
scale <512,128,1>
translate <0,-10,-10>
}
texture{T_Wood7}
scale 0.75
translate <-10,610,1000>
}

Here's more artwork created by Jaime. Both of below art have won top prize at the IRTC and the second image, Bonsai, is treasured at the hall of fame. Comparing these two top artwork, I like both very much but I'm slighty in favor of the second one. It's more more realistic with almost prefect color combinations, lighting and image rendering. The first art is in fine detail as many small elements make up the artwork. It seems like Jaime is trying to protray a message with the first art.

References: Wikipeidia, Jamie's Site

Charles Csuri

Biography

Charles A. Csuri is an artist and computer graphics pioneer and a professor at The Ohio State University and a former All America Football player. In 1964, he started to experiment with computer graphics technology, with limited sources however, a year later he began creating computer animated films. The 4th International Experimental Film Festival in 1967 at Brussels, Belgium, he was awarded him the prize for animation. One of his computer films is also in the collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art.

For over 22 years and with the support of National Science Foundation, the Navy, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, he has directed research projects in computer graphics. This covered 15 major projects and over 8 million dollar of funding. More than forty graduate students in computer science were engaged in the research. In addition, there were over fifty students from the field of art.

Ohio State University awarded him the ‘Joseph Sullivant Medal’ which is their highest honor. The award is made on the basis of alumni or a faculty member's work which has had a significant impact upon society. It is awarded only once every five years.

Infinite Digital Art

Charles got the concept of Infinite Digital Art in 1966 just after he created “Flies” and “Random War” in which he used a random number generator to produce a series of images dealing with flies and another with soldiers. In his 3-d world of objects, Charles gives these objects behaviors and so they have to respond to the rules. For example, each of them has their own individual properties such as lighting, rotation angles, or even the atmosphere. Then, the objects copy themselves or change entirely to a different object at any instance.

Charles defines many functions which can be used to make changes to the objects and their relationship to one another. One function can be applied to just one aspect of an object. For example, lines and their thickness can be represented by a mathematical function, b-spline function. The line thickness can change to all directions such as front to back or from the right side to the left side. The density of each objects atmosphere is set with parameters in another function.

His animation process basically consists of 5 main functions. He applies these functions to create his animation art.

1. Uses algorithms representing parameters
2. These algorithms determine visual elements (i.e. color, shape, lighting)
3. Programming strategies to create random variation and levels of control
4. Setting limitations to position scale, rotation angles, etc
5. The software keeps track of pervious parameters to make changes

And the software?

Charles writes his animation art in AL Language (Animation Language) combined with a mathematical function called the b-spline. The AL language is an extension of Scheme which is a LISP-like language which is powerful and general purpose, but relatively easy to learn and use. It is an environment for procedural computer animation which provides powerful modeling language. This allows him to create his art in a more elegant and beautiful way. The founder of the AL program helped Charles to write the b-spline function and the geometry of the objects are include to work with Renderman and BRMT. The built in functions in the program helps to improve the quality of his art.

Critics

From New York Times, Mattew Mirapaul, added a statement in his article by Barbara London of the Museum of Modern Art quoting the following:

“What [Csuri] did was way ahead of his time," said Barbara London, MOMA's associate curator of film and video. "I put him in a league with people like Ed Emshwiller, who came out of painting and science-fiction illustration. They really had a vision of how to use these tools."

This statement basically outlines the understanding Charles had of the tools/software he used to create his art. Ed Emshwiller was one of the best during the 1960’s in computer animated films. Therefore, Barbara rates Charles as the same league as Ed Emshwiller.