EMAIL:gerritvn@osi.co.za
NAME:Daniel van Niekerk
TOPIC:Alien Summer
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
RENDERER USED:Polyray v.1.8
TOOLS USED:Preprocessors :
            Blobwin,CSD;
            City,Pipe,coral,texgen (Own small utilities--freely available);
   //If anybody wants them or if you have ideas or code ,please call me
RENDER TIME: 6 Hours
HARDWARE USED: Pentium 100 mHz with Mathco
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

  The aliens on Faffel have a nice time when it is summer.(Once every 25
  earth-years) and they really enjoy themselves on what can be described
  in earthly terms as the beach.Glassy hotels overlook the prime beach
  with mottled sand,and it is also a renowned diving spot,as can be seen
  from the submobile inspecting some indigenous seaweed.Water is abundant
  on this planet,so the ocean is a permanent feature.Consequently,there
  are a number of interesting plants and sponges,namely the glass-spunge
  and the ribbed spunge that dwell here.
  On land,gaint Cactii dominate the
  scene,but,in contrast to Earth,they are Tropical plants,lush and
  evergreen, and a much sought_after delicacy.

  To the left of it is part
  of a Gyro-go-round (The equivalent of  "Merry-go-rounds") where little
  Faffanians can tumble and roll for minellia on end.Ultra high windspeeds
  in the upper atmosphere distorts the clouds to a rushing conglomerate,but
  it is not enough to block out the intense Gamma-radiation.All the
  beachcombers therefore have a X-ray and Gamma-ray protecting umbrella.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

 The basic sand and sea are height functions,the sea being transparent
 and both having color_maps.I wrote a few small utilities to create the
 buildings,the pipes and the random textures on the umbrellas.The Cactii
 are scaled spheres with a noisy normal,The gyroscope torii and spheres,
 and the submarine utilizes spheres and  bezier patches(as propellar-fins).
 These,and the patches used in the umbrellas,where created by writing
 coordinates on graph-paper,inputting them,and changing them to fit.
 (A long and tedious procedure :> )

 The colormaps's colors where mainly
 created with CSD,and edited until satisfying.The "coral" was created
 by a simple program I wrote.The rocks were made by using Blobwin,first
 "creating" a wall,and then later "distoting" it to look like natural rock.
 The spunges are spherical height fields.The submarines lamps are colored
 lights(+-the same color of the sea) enclosed by transparent cones
 with a noisey color-map.

 My methology for creating this was firstly to get the basic idea of what
 I wanted to do (changed several times).I then modeled each object rather
 seperatedly in a template file,before including them.For thesting,I
 used wireframe rendering to see the objects,and used solid matte colors
 to speeden things up.

 I found that,To the extent that I could visualize
 something and "see" it's position,I could quickly make advances.The most
 time was wasted when I tried to render the picture from close up,with
 all the include files included and busy placing the objects initially.
 The city,for example,was first created by two simple programs and then
 I used these Modules to build up the city,implementing codes,a paper and
 pen for their relative positions.I think that what,for me,gives the best
 effect,is when a picture is drawn a lot of times,something "unexpected"
 pops up,and I like it so much that it is part of the next "version" of
 my image,instead of being erased as a mistake.

 Over and above everything,raytracing gives my creative side a oppurtunity
 to develop and express itself-->and my geometry improves ;>