TITLE: Watching the Aurora
NAME: Guillermo Sanz Romero
EMAIL: famrom@ran.es
WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/4774/index.html
TOPIC: Night
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: gr_auror.jpg
ZIPFILE: gr_auror.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POVRay 3.02.msdos.wat-cwa and POVRay 3.02.win32.proton

TOOLS USED: 
    sPatch, DOS Edit, Notepad, Terrain Maker, PP7

RENDER TIME: 
    6m 27s

HARDWARE USED: 
    PC iP55-166MHz(MMX)


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


A explorer, in the middle of no mans land, watching the Aurora Borealis.

I know the image is simple, but thats is the idea, "the aurora and you alone".

 Viewing note: the scene is dark, but not black. You should see a dark
environment, with a cyan aurora, and a guy with a dark red coat and dark blue
hat. He also has ear and neck protections. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


The idea came after watching TV news: a group of Spanish explorers was
walking to reach the Northen Magnetic Pole. Mix that with some scenes I recall
from magazines and films. And, of course, the TV series Northen Exposure
(Doctor en Alaska, in Spanish TV).

For more info about the expedition try this:
http://www.teleline.es/expedia/polo_mag/home.htm

First I create the person. He is 1176 hand coded patches... ;  just kidding, I
used sPatch. The basic shapes were built with lathe, and then the points were
edited with the other tools (translate, rotate...).

With the model ready I started the handcoded part (now seriously). First was
to change the textures of the model, and place him with correct camera and
lights.

After that, I added the ground, the mountains and the three layers of fog.
Some modification were made to lights too.

The final part was the aurora, made with a plane (clipped to remove the
zones I do not want) and some nested textures.

I used Terrain Maker for the mountains, PP7 for the signature and conversion
to jpeg.