TITLE: Noble Gases
NAME: Stephen Lumini
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: s_lumini@hotmail.com
TOPIC: Elements
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: noblegas.jpg
ZIPFILE: noblegas.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POVRAY 3.0

TOOLS USED: 
    POVRAY 3.0, MORAY 3.0, Paint Shop Pro (to convert the TGA to a JPG)

RENDER TIME: 
    41 minutes, 41 seconds

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 90 - 40 meg RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    Entering the Outer Ring of Castle Valence, you happen upon
two of the Noble Gases.  It is an unusual pairing - Lord Radon's cold
personality and harsh demenour couterpoint to Lady Xenon's bright, cheerful and
mostly flirtatous nature.  There are rumours that she has been coupling with
many of the common elements and the evidence seems quite clear from the names
of some of her court: Xenon Hydrate, Sodium Perxenate, Xenon Difluoride, and
the explosive Xenon Trioxide (most likley all bastard offspring).  She is
visibly excited by your presence, perhaps you will find out if the rumours are
true.

Description of How the Image was created: I have always thought the term noble
gases somewhat romantic - implying, I guess, that these elements were to
important to "breed" with the lesser, more promiscious elements (Hydrogen is
such a whore). It was a very small leap to thinking of the gases as Nobles and
simply anthropomorphisizing then into Lords and Ladies.  I had initially
planned them to resemble 19th century aristocrocy, but the top hat and coat,
and all the other cloiture proved beyond my abilities. Knowing that noble gases
are odorless and colourless by nature I researched their properties for
different conditions. Radon, when cooled below the freezing point, exhibits a
brilliant phosphorescence which becomes yellow as the temperature is lowered
and orange-red at the temperature of liquid air.  While Xenon produces a blue
glow when excited by an electrical discharge in a vacuum tube.

Technical stuff: The faces and clothes are bezier patches - all modeled in
sPatch (most awesome tool- the homepage has all sorts of very useful
tutorials!!).  The "heads" and "hands" are sphere and cone merges "filled" with
colourful halos.  The pillars and hallway are standard Cylinder, Cones, Spheres
and Toruses.  The light on the door is a spotlight in a hollow Cube with
"slats" cut out the bottom.