TITLE: One atomic time unit before light speed
NAME: Nicolas Argyrou
COUNTRY: France
EMAIL: nargy@yahoo.com
TOPIC: Speed
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: rtcspeed.jpg
ZIPFILE: rtcspeed.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray v3.6.1

TOOLS USED: 
    Linux 2.6, vim (powerful 3d editor ), ImageMagick (jpeg conversion)

RENDER TIME: 
    2h 06m 25s

HARDWARE USED: 
    "AMD Sempron(TM) 2400+" 1.666GHz

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

This picture, taken at the beginning of the Earth-Mars electro-photonic
spaceway, shows a FC7 shuttle just before it enters the speed of light.
It shows sparckles and time diffraction that appear around the shuttle
before the light bang.
Three cameras were burned by the explosion before the atomic shield could
trigger in time, and makes this picture the closest from light speed.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

In fact, it took me three failed attempts to find a subject to the IRTC.
I was going to more complicated scenes but also was afraid I could run out of
time. So I chose something quite easy and fast to render.

The spaceship is made of CSGs: spheres, cones, boxes. Textures are made with
the wonderful 'turbulence' keyword of povray.

The "electro-photonic" field is made of emission particules with the 'crackle'
pattern. The sparckles are made with a 'black_hole warp' and are randomly
disposed at the spaceship's border.

The "time diffraction" is made with repetition of the spaceship with semi-
transparent textures.

The title is a thin text placed near the camera. The title's background is
a small semi-transparent box.

The scene is rendered at a 1600x1200 resolution with little antialiasing, then
converted to 1024x768 to fit the 250K JPEG requirement.


