Friday, April 23, 2010

Cover art design with PovRay 6

This will be the last of the blogs on cover art design with Pov-Ray.

Here is the tiled Machiavelli world. Other than the script provided, and Pov-Ray, you'll need the public domain image of Machiavelli, obtained from Wikipedia.


Click on image for larger size

Notice that there are two light sources, and two shadows to the globe.
#include "colors.inc" 
#include "textures.inc"
#include "shapes.inc"

camera {
 right      < -1.33, 0, 0 > 
 up         < 0, 1, 0 > 
 direction  < 0, 0, 1 > 
 location   < 0, 4, 20 > 
 look_at    < 0, 0, 0 > 
}

light_source { < -20, 35, 34 > 
color White
}

light_source { < 0, 0, 24 > 
color White
}

plane { y, -20
    pigment{ color Gray80}
    normal { ripples 1.0 frequency 3 scale 8}
    finish {
        reflection 0.15
        ambient 0.3      
    }
}
                 
sphere { <0, 0, 0>, 5.0
      pigment { image_map 
                { gif "c:\ftp\mach_wiki_public.gif" 
                //filepath for the Machiavelli image                       
                  map_type 0                       
                  interpolate 2 
                 } } 
          }


A modified version of this script was used to produce the cover art for Machiavelli's Laboratory, a satire on science ethics.

-© 2010 Jules J. Berman
Science is not a collection of facts. Science is what facts teach us; what we can learn about our universe, and ourselves, by deductive thinking. From observations of the night sky, made without the aid of telescopes, we can deduce that the universe is expanding, that the universe is not infinitely old, and why black holes exist. Without resorting to experimentation or mathematical analysis, we can deduce that gravity is a curvature in space-time, that the particles that compose light have no mass, that there is a theoretical limit to the number of different elements in the universe, and that the earth is billions of years old. Likewise, simple observations on animals tell us much about the migration of continents, the evolutionary relationships among classes of animals, why the nuclei of cells contain our genetic material, why certain animals are long-lived, why the gestation period of humans is 9 months, and why some diseases are rare and other diseases are common. In “Armchair Science”, the reader is confronted with 129 scientific mysteries, in cosmology, particle physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine. Beginning with simple observations, step-by-step analyses guide the reader toward solutions that are sometimes startling, and always entertaining. “Armchair Science” is written for general readers who are curious about science, and who want to sharpen their deductive skills.