EMAIL: jcato@infoave.net
NAME: James F. Cato III  (Just call me 'Bo'. Everyone else does. =))
TOPIC: Night
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Islands in the night
COUNTRY: U.S.A.
WEBPAGE: I have a web page.. but it does not concern my art. Sorry.
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray v3.01 for Win 95
TOOLS USED: Moray 3.0, sPatch, Galaxy include by Chris Colefax,
            and 'My Brain'. =)
RENDER TIME: 0d 5m 14s
HARDWARE USED: Pentium 266 mhz MMX, 32meg 9ns SDRAM, 512 L2 cache. This
is my hand built pride and joy.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

In 4 days I have rediscovered POV-Ray, tracked down most if not all
tools, includes, programs and other gadgets, FAQ and tut's and found
the time to learn all the things that have happend to and for POV since
the early '90s. Plus relearn all the things I sorta knew then. Whew.
Anyway... this sorta started out as a 'getting familiar with POV' thing
and then turned into a 'what the heck is Halo?' thing and ended up as a 
'lets see how well I can place in the IRTC' thing.

I have always loved sci-fi and fantasy. The first full scene I wanted to
work on was because of that love a space related one.  Then lo and behold!
I find that the IRTC topic is 'Night'. Perfect. Nothing says night like the
depths of space, no?  So... I finished my atypical space scene and thought
of (what I think to be) a real jazzy title and ta-da.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

Over all Design-
Most if not all of the actual placement and design was done with Moray. Also
all of the texture and halo experiments where done with Moray. It's super with
textures. I have Chris Colefax to thank for the wonderful looking stars and 
dust nebula that give the scene a real look.  I worked with one of the example
files he includes until I made a background that would mesh well with the other
elements I had in mind. I have radiosity turned on. And Anti-A turned off. 
AA sorta kills my stars even on very weak settings.  Any fix for that?

Planet-
You average sphere blown up and set far away.  The texture is a modified stone 
texture T_Grnt16. I worked with the color map and turb until I got what I wanted.

Moon-
Another sphere. But this one is very, very small. Much smaller than you would
think. I left shadow on because I love lunar eclipses.  As you can see from the
scene one is occuring about where the equator would be.  But I wanted the shadow
to look in scale with the size of the planet vs moon. So I had to place the moon
very near the camera and shrink the size to 0.1. 

Planet rings-
This took the longest to get right.. and it's still not right enought for me.
The rings are really a huge sphere with a halo texture. I spent about a day
getting the color map and samples to work the magic rings the way I wanted. I
think the effect was worth it. Very realistic looking.. I just can't get the %$#@
thing to rotate the texture!  So I had to go with the Uranus style rings instead 
of the Saturn type. I guess that is a bug.. or maybe a feature.  Whatever.

Space ship-
This is where sPatch really did a job for me. I started with a single circle and
extruded and pulled and extrueded and tugged until I had a nice space ship. I 
actually started out just making a rocket tube that I was going to attach to
a space ship but I made a boo-boo. It looked sorta strange so I just went with it.
A pretty cool looking space ship is what resulted. I tried the gold texture on the
ship and fell in love with it. Two things hard-core raytracers love best.. Spheres
and reflective objects. I have both!!! =)  Nothing like a hot-waxed gold colored
space ship I always say.

Jet flame-
The second most difficult aspect of this scene. And yes.. it is also a halo.
I made a long cone with the pointed end expanded from a point to a blunt.
Just shoved the thing into the jet engine hole I left in my ship from sPatch.
Spent about 3 hours tinkering with the color map and other nice little gadgets 
till it came out like I wanted. I am very proud of it to tell the truth. I works
very well for a flame thing. I even get a bonus reflection off the inside of one
of the delta wings of my ship.  Too bad it does not cause light shading. I guess
I could've made a light source and placed it inside or near the flame to give
that effect. Ah well. Maybe next time.


