EMAIL: steve@g7mrp.demon.co.uk
NAME: Steve Attwood
TOPIC: Science Fiction
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 2.2
TOOLS USED: Cyber Sculpt 1.1, Display 1.87b, Paint Shop Pro 3.12, 3D2POV 1.8
RENDER TIME: 1 hour 30 minutes
HARDWARE USED: Pentium 60MHz 8Mb RAM, Atari 520STFM 4Mb RAM
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Title: 'Pitstop' - A starship refuels from an energy 
                   pyramid left by a long dead civilisation more than 
                   10,000 years ago.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

All the models in the scene were modelled using the Cyber Sculpt package on 
the Atari ST. The .3D2 file was converted to an .INC file for use in POV by 
3D2POV. The pyramid was saved seperately in a different file to retain it's
hard edges. The two seperate .INC files were then joined together in Write.
3D2POV converts Cyber Sculpt .3D2 files into POV-Ray smooth triange .INC
files, some of which can be very(!) large.

Textures were then created using a variety of paint packages, which are 
tileable and code (image maps) was added to the .POV file generated by the 
3D2POV program to apply the textures to the surface of the spacecraft and 
pyramid. A grey scale 'tile' was also applied (as a bump map) which is just 
a number of overlapping grey blocks to give the impression of irregular 
surfaces and bolt-on panels.

A plane was added for the background, using an agate texture and a custom
colour map for the sky.

The 'energy funnel' coming from the spaceship down to the top of the pyramid
is an agate texture and using colour white and transparency (filter values 
ranging from 0.85 to 0.985), gives the impression of a cone of energy that 
the starship is drawing off the pyramid.

The image was finally rendered, requiring a 20Mb swap file and one and a  
half hours to raytrace with anti-alaising set to 0.3. 

A copyright message was added using Paint Shop Pro, and the image was converted
to JPEG format using Display 1.87b with the quality set to 100%.

Steve-----> 
20th October 1996
This is image can also be seen among others at my WWW Gallery:-  
http://www.g7mrp.demon.co.uk/dwsteve.html