TITLE: alien
NAME: Michael Hough
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: AmaltheaJ5@aol.com
TOPIC: Arts & Entertainment
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: alien.jpg
ZIPFILE: alien.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.02 msdos

TOOLS USED: 
    Povray 3.02 windows and dos6.02 editor

RENDER TIME: 
    30 hours 4 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    486\DX2 20MB ram


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


I first began with the notion of creating an image of the studio of an American
landscape painter.  I gave it some thought, and concluded that the idea didn't
really appeal to me, and would probably appeal to others even less.  So I
turned to my favorite movies for inspiration.  My three favorites are the
Empire Strikes Back, 2001, and Alien.
  The first two have some great scenes, but what makes them so effective is the
combination of dialog, music, and motion.  Alien turned out to be the perfect
subject, for I find the visuals in this picture to be outstanding.  The scene
inside the ship instantly came to mind.  I find it amazing how so much thought
and effort was expended by HRGiger and Ridley Scott for this seemingly small
part of the film.  I decided to focus on the pilot of the alien wreck because
of the most clever way it foreshadows the later events in the film.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


  I began with the platform on which the pilot's chair rests.  It is composed
almost entirely of tori, cylinders, and box objects.  They were either rotated
to create the gear like objects, or translated to make the ridges on the pipes.
 I was using Povray for windows running under win32's, but soon had to switch
to dos to stop the GPF's.

  The scene was split up into three parts to speed up the test renders.  The
platform was completed rather quickly, and the background took just a bit
longer. I did run into a number of problems with the latter.  I started with a
large torus clipped by another torus of slightly lesser diameter.  Then I
rotated a large number of small tori perpendicular to the large one to create
the ridges on the background.  Then the declared background part was merely
translated to fill the rest of the image.  I tried a normal pattern at first,
but it simply didn't look right.

  The pilot and the gun took the most time, but they also went the most
smoothly.  The pilot is just one big blob with some tori added for the ribs.  I
used alot of csg, mostly clipping and difference to carve the shape out.  The
'gun' is composed of blobs and csg as well.  I added a crackle normal pattern
to get the chipped and tattered look to the gun and the pilot's head.  

  I resisted the temptation to use more complex objects in order to keep the
renders reasonably short.  I think the fog was a nice touch, even though it was
only present in the lower deck of the ship in the movie.  I used a ground fog,
to which I added a great deal of turbulence, so that it would look more like
mist than fog.

  I considered using more lights, but I really liked how the one spotlight
looked, so I decided to keep the lighting simple.  Very few textures were used,
but I designed them carefully to keep the scene subdued, but not too dark.