EMAIL: shogun@compsoc.cs.latrobe.edu.au
URL: http://compsoc.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~shogun
NAME: Alexander Cohen
TOPIC: Science Fiction
COPYRIGHT: I submit to the standard raytracing competition copyright.
RENDERER USED: Persistance Of Vision 3.0
TOOLS USED: A text editor.  Paintshop Pro to convert to JPEG.
RENDER TIME: Approx 10 hours
HARDWARE USED: 486DX2/80
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A starship enters orbit around a planet.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

I didn't start this scene until about a a week or so before the submission date
so I didn't start to do anything especially creative. After a little thought I
decided to do a 'traditional' spaceship/space scene.
        
Starting with a very basic textures sphere for the planet I positioned the
camera (I dont use modellers) and made a simple star-sphere. That looked
way too plain so I put together a simple nebula texture which somehow looked
almost perfect first render, a couple of renders later I had my space looking
just about right.

I then started working on the real texture for the planet, after a lot of
fiddling around I finally settled on a partially transparent land texture
with an ocean texture showing through the transparent areas. This looked ok
but not quite right, so a after a lot more fiddling I found that putting
a glowing around the planet made a very nice atmosphere.

Finally I built the simplistic spaceship out various unions and differences
of the primitive shapes. Nothing really special in this, other than the nice
halo'd exhaust from its engines.

This entire scene was created entirely by hand. ie no modellers, texture
previewers etc etc..