TITLE: "Asteroid Miner" NAME: Robert J Becraft COUNTRY: USA EMAIL: castlewrks@aol.com WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/6080 http://user.aol.com/castlewrks/metaphaze/frisco/frisco.htm TOPIC: NIGHT COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: astminer.jpg ZIPFILE: astminer.zip RENDERER USED: POVRAY 3.02 for DOS running under OS/2 Warp TOOLS USED: POVRAY for render, sPatch for asteroid, Paint Shop Pro for copyright and title RENDER TIME: Just under 18 hours, 61meg HARDWARE USED: 233mmx IMAGE DESCRIPTION: _________________________________________ An Introduction _________________________________________ "Date: October 9, 2160, 0200 hours GMT -- Location: Asteroid Sector 0298 -- Ship's Log: Delta-T 09-84E Scooter patrol Zebra-9 reports a slow-rotation boogie (asteroid) on approach to the mothership's warning zone and is dispatched to investigate. The crew is on night shift and unaware of the immenent danger they may be called on to deal with. Scooter patrol Alpha-1 is on approach for docking maneuvers and turns up the communication tower spotlights to aid in navigation. All in all it is a quiet night on board." ________________________________________ ASTMINER is a ray-trace of a ship designed from modules associated with a Space game I designed many years ago called "SYSTEM". The basis for the game is the "gold-rush" to the asteroid belt. The concept is that man has yet to accomplish inter-stellar travel, but has mastered inter-system travel. The Asteroid Miner rendered in this picture is on night watch... off in the distance is a small scooter craft that is taking a look at a potentially dangerous asteroid near the main ship. The bridge of the ship is deserted, but contains seats, consoles and even a "Star Trekkie" captain's chair, as well as a couple of silvery equipment boxes. Spotlights located on the 4 sides of the communications tower light up various sections of the ship. They contain fully functional light sources. However, to get the full effect of the light graduations on the ship itself, these light sources were toned back to just glow levels and spotlight sources were added to create the correct level of lighting on the ship. (An interesting side-note, trying to add these same types of lights to each module pushed the memory requirements of the render off the scale and became unrenderable... hence the use of high-ambient spheres instead). One of the scooters mentioned in the intro is off to the right of the rendered frame. It's spotlights caste a light green glow on the front command module and docking tube. The second scooter is off to the right of the asteroid in the background. It's spotlights are what light up that object. The science lab is located immediately adjacent to the command module. Storage pods are placed across the back of the miner, while habitate modules are placed under the storage pods. The massive engines of the ship flank the ship's crane that can be used to tether potentially valuable ore bearing asteroids to the ship and dragged enmasse back to the smelter. The engines get fuel from the 6 fuel pods located below and just in front of them. Each module included in this render is from a standard set of "plug-n-go" modules. There are engines, fuel-pods, habitate, storage, command, communication, docking and facility modules. Using the "SYSTEM" game rules, it is possible to build the entire of standard ships concieved of for the game in POV. Watch for these at: "http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/6080". Each of the modules are based on a 10 meter radius, giving modules that are a total of 20 meters in diameter. Each module is designed to connect it in each of 6 directions, with the exception of the engine modules. Frames are connector tubes that are used to connect modules together, they provide redundant paths between modules. The tube seams even have rivets and indicator panels rendered on them. _______________________________ How this image was created: _______________________________ Asteroid Miner was created using the concept of the "SYSTEM" game and creating unique modules for each of the components of the ship. Each component was created using the same dimensions for each object with the exceptions of the docking tube, communications array and the engines. Every object was created with a minimal amount of detail, and then over and over and over objects were added and improved until the render reflected the level of detail submitted for the competition. Especially important was the concept of light for this render. There is one light that originates from outside the render and that comes off of a scooter that is positioned off the lower right corner of the frame. In another view, this scooter was visible. All the other lights were designed so that they originate from objects in the render. The spotlights on the communications tower contain actual light objects. The red lights on the crane object originate from lights that are attached around the outside of the top of the crane. Since the light levels are so low, the asteroid field generated in this module was not visible and removed from the final picture. However, if a "sun" is added to the render, the asteroids can be reinserted into the render and form a field off in the distance behind the ship. Switches were used to turn on and off features that were placed into the picture over time and allow for faster renders of specific parts of the picture by commenting or uncommenting the switches at the top of the deck. Once an object was placed in it's final position, or obtained its final colors and textures, there was no need to render it along with another object that had not yet gotten such treatments.