Hildur Kolbrun Andresdottir project

Full size image and additional caption below
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
This is a quiet evening. You sit down with a nice cup of tea and a good book. An hour goes by and it´s getting late. The fire will soon be dying out and you start to feel chilly. This must be a draft, you think and glance at the clock. It´s just past midnight, time for bed. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, some books drop from their shelves, right in front of you. You jump off your chair in panic and step instinctively away from the books. In the process you knock over your chair. You feel the temperature dropping in the room. It now feels freezing. A couple of more books fall down on the floor. You try to reassure yourself. This is just a coincidence. I must have been careless when I picked the book from the shelf earlier. Still you can´t help gazing down the hallway, into the darkness. You try to resist it, but fear starts creeping in. You are not alone. Somebody or something is here.

The inspiration to the layout of this scene is taken from the website dedicated to the Borley Rectory, "The Most Haunted House In England". www.borleyrectory.com The short version of this story: http://borleyrectory.com/misc/history.htm All copyrights are owned by it´s author, Vincent O'Neil, President, Borley Ghost Society, who kindly gave me permission to base my scene on material from his website.

In short: There were reports from a lot of different people of paranormal activity in and around the rectory, that go a long way back. This includes almost every thinkable type of paranormal activity, poltergeist, throwing things, ghosts seen or heard, writing appearing on walls, strange lights in windows, etc. The list is endless. Finally the house mysteriously burned down in the late thirties, after being empty for some time. People have been investigating these reports for decades, trying to figure out what really happened there. My guess is that we will never know, it will remain a mystery forever.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Firstly I want to thank Michael Hunter for his invaluable insights during this process. The fireplace (lots of CSG´s) is loosely based on a photo from the rectory. It took a while to model but I liked the style, it´s a bit unusual. The pattern is a heightfield. The rest of the room is CSG´s, also the furniture, some items are rot sweeps and the floor is generated with the wall plugin in Moray. The lighting is mostly area lights, one inside the lamp, one in front of the fireplace to enhance the patterns, one faint dark blue in the hallway. I use caustics on the glass material for the lamp to cast more light on the wall behind it. I use radiosity with very low settings to keep the contrast between dark and light, count only 15. Lowest I´ve ever used. Finally I put a filter in front of the camera with a blue-yellow gradient to create a contrast of temperature.

Enjoy!

Alternative views - not in competition

NAME: Hildur Kolbrun Andresdottir
EMAIL: hildurka@simnet.is
TOPIC: Mystery
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Haunted
COUNTRY: Iceland
WEBPAGE: n/a
RENDERER USED: Povray 3.5
TOOLS USED: Moray 3.3, Photoshop, Corel Draw
RENDER TIME: Approx 2 hours
HARDWARE USED: Amd Athlon 1200 mHz, 512 mb RAM

"Later [that night], while alone in the drawing-room, L 'Estrange was making notes of the evening's events when he heard cautious but distinct footsteps apparently enter the room. He told us he felt a chill run down his spine but he did not turn round. He heard the footsteps approach him and then pause, seemingly directly behind him and close to the settee on which he sat. He turned quietly but there was nobody there and nothing to account for the sound of footsteps. Then he heard the sounds recommence and as he watched the empty area he followed the direction of the footsteps as they passed on and seemed to go through the wall at the far end of the room."
Borley Postscript by Peter Underwood page 115. Contributed by Andrew Clarke