My Experiences with Ray Tracing

In 1993 a friend gave me a shareware copy of the POV Ver 1.0 Ray Tracing program and I was instantly enchanted. It was artwork and programming combined! I had just completed a community college course in programming and was very interested in computer artwork. This scripting language was just the thing to combine artistic expression and logical programming.

During 1993-95 I learned the art of scripting scenes by designing the Temple and Garden series of images. The temple was the first structure I designed, awful snakeskin roof and all! To landscape the area around the temple I then experimented using every shape that POV offered to build a Garden of Sculpture. Through 1995-96 I refined and expanded the original scenes into the CheckFloors series. These scenes gave me a lot of practice at building CSG objects out of simple component parts. The third series of pictures, Our House, was started in 1997 to create a set of basic objects--architectural elements in this case--that could be used to design buildings. The subject of this set was a palacial home set in a walled garden. Here I learned someting about aligning complex objects, glass work, lighting and texture refinements.

In the Summer of 97 I finally went online and quickly discovered the exixtence of PoV Ver 3!
I started converting some of my older images into Ver 3 scripts last spring. These newest versions are slowly being made ready for publishing. Mostly I've been improving and revising Our House, fine-tuning the structural elements, tweeking textures. I started with R_House, revised it into N_House (the images previously on this site), and am now fiddling it into N_House (Gallery Four). Check back here in regularly to see new work.

And now it is October 1999: I have an upgraded computer ( Pentium 133, 32M RAM, 650M hd ), WIN95 and POV v3.1g. The Our_House series is going thru yet another revision: I swear that this will be the end. Four years on this single project is too much. It's almost the same time frame as designing and building a real-world home.
I've been on-line more frequently, visiting the POV News Groups. This is a wonderful resource for help, learning and teaching, participating in the POV community.

UPDATE 6 Jan 00: These last two months I have been working on the IRTC Group Image Project helping to create "A Street Fair". Please visit the GIP Site; perhaps you could join in and contribute to the scene!

UPDATE 13 July 2001 I see that 18 months have passed since the last update. Work on the GIP scene has come to a quiet halt; contributations trailed off and my computer hit a memory wall trying to render the final image. A friend offered to render the image on his machine but it started having problems and I lost motivation to continue.
I revised Our_House into a Modernist/International style building during this time, but, again, it's been slow going. Current images in Gallery Seven.
This last year has been pretty rough personally so I've been distracted a lot. But the good news is that I am now in a drug abuse recovery program and am feeling much, much better. With about a hundred days clean time I can think, feel, and act much more normally. Motivation returns and new POV work begins!

UPDATE: 7 November 2001: More than 7 months clean in my recovery-from-drugs program!

This last month I've been re-working some of the details of the Modernist Home: raised all the ceilings +2 feet, adjusted walls and windows accordingly; added a stove, sink, frig, cabinets to the west kitchen; tweaked the domed window. This month I added mock-up objects to the upstairs bathroom...(does anybody have a decent-looking frosted glass?)...and lights throughout the house.

And, most importantly, added new pictures to the gallery!

UPDATE: 28 December 2002: More than 20 months clean in my recovery-from-drugs program!

Well, at last, I think I am finished with the exterior of the Modernist Home. I re-checked, that is, re-rendered all the rooms of the house. The resulting new Beauty Shots are in the revised Gallery Seven. Now it is on to the interior decorating and firnishings ... thank Hera for the Home & Garden Channel on TV!