A Study in Atmospheric Lighting Effects

This image was inspired by a visit to The Hill House near Glasgow, Scotland. Hill House was designed and built by the Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the early 1900s; the table depicted in the rendering here is based on a table Mackintosh designed and constructed that is on display in the drawing room.

During the visit, a friend of mine commented that, as it was raining that day, it would be really interesting to see the effect of light shining through the table and the shadows it would cause.

Before leaving the United Kingdom in September of 2004, I started working on a model of this table to see what the effect of a bright light on the table would generate in resulting shadows. Shortly after our trip to Hill House, we visited the Glasgow School of Art, and learned that Mackintosh's designs were influenced by his facination with Japanese design elements, and that one of the things he was interested in was making those designs cast shadows that had an organic feel to them.

This inspired me further to experiment not only with the idea of sunlight shining through the table, but also to play with media attenuation and atmospheric effects - two features of POVRay that I had previously not worked with.

In addition, Mackintosh included in a number of his works organic elements themselves; the rose is a common theme in his stained glass designs, combined with geometric patterns that reflect his interest in Japanese design styles; the rose in the vase is a "tip of the hat" to that aspect of his work that provides a splash of color to an otherwise largely monochromatic image.

Moray 3.5 for Windows, POVRay 3.6.1 for Linux (Built from the standard source distribution), and Idelon Clement's rose model from the Moray object library.

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