TITLE: The Wonders of Element #92 NAME: Victor Woeltjen COUNTRY: U.S.A. EMAIL: skywise@fix.net WEBPAGE: http://www.fix.net/~skywise/ TOPIC: Elements COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: vw_num92.jpg RENDERER USED: POV-Ray v3.00 TOOLS USED: Moray for Windows RENDER TIME: 5 hours, 0 minutes, and 7 seconds HARDWARE USED: 166 mHz Pentium IMAGE DESCRIPTION: When I read the topic, only one thing popped into mind: Element #92, Uranium. To be truthful, it was one specific use of Uranium that took my mind. Immediately I began working on a model of the inner workings of the Uranium-based atomic bomb. From the beginning I didn't want to raytrace a simple schematic, but I wanted to showcase the basic structure of the bomb. This led me to a dimly humorous idea: Y'know those telephones they have, with the see-through plastic casing? The ones where the circuitboard and such are visible? Well, why not have an atomic bomb like that? The subtly unnerving irony appealed to me, and I took the idea forward. My original intentions were to have something more "realistic" than the final product. That is to say that I wanted fewer artistic liberties taken with the bomb. I quickly took a few steps away from that; After all, realism is why they invented cameras. So, I don't know what this is now. It's two see-through atomic bombs on display in a room with 2 mirrors and no doors. Anything more than that sort of muddles the point... DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: I didn't use any amazing techniques in this rendering (which is part of why I didn't release the source...) But, I've got time to kill at the moment, so I'll go through a description of each object. :) Both pieces of U-235 were created using CSG... The larger piece using difference, the smaller an intersection. Both used the same set of spheres. The U-238 was basically the U-235 with a larger base sphere and a darker, partially transparent texture. For the packing and explosive I used superellipsoids (this is the first time I've really used them, and I fell in love with them instantly). The detonating head is just a stretched U-235 intersection with a different texture. The detonating device was just a cylinder with a grey metal texture and a yellow question mark (Arial text object) which didn't show up in this rendering. The lead shield was simple CSG. I took a merged sphere and cylinder, then differenced a smaller sphere and cylinder from it. The texture grew more and more transparent over time as I tried to make the innards more visible. The little red wire was kind of interesting. I took a half-torus (torus with a square differenced out of it.) and used Moray's Duplicate feature, with offsetting enabled. I added a couple of quarter-toruses at the corners, but the single duplicated object was about all I needed. The power source is just a red superellipsoid. Nothing much there. Then I made a larger, mostly transparent superellipsoid and enclosed the whole deal in it. Sort of a plastic bubble. The room was made separately. I just used a hollow cube for the walls. In retrospect I kind of wish I'd gone with a cube-like superellipsoid, so that the walls curved into the cieling. The floor was just a plane... Yawn. The two little tables upon which the bombs were placed were, guess what, superellipsoids. I love those :) Then there were the mirrors... Thin cubes with a completely reflective texture. I love the repeating image effect... I'm suprised that it isn't used more often (heh, it's probably just such a tired cliche that nobody uses it any more, and I'm just too out of the rendering community to realise it :) Oh well...). The frames were simple cylinders with corner-spheres. Nothing amazing there... After all this, I just merged the two scenes together, set up the lighting, positioned the bombs, and placed the camera. Nothing amazing, but I'm pretty proud of it for a short three nights' work. So long as I don't place dead last, I'm happy :) Here's some information on the structure of the bomb, for those who are interested. There are 9 basic pieces to the model of the atomic bomb: 1. U-235 chunk (little green bullet-shaped piece) 2. U-235 recepticle (green sphere) 3. U-238 shield (somewhat transparent green sphere around recepticle) 4. Lead shield (largely transparent grey area surrounding inner components) 5. Packing (dark grey superellipsoid, next to U-235 chunk) 6. Conventional explosive (brown, semi-transparent mass behind packing) 7. Detonating head (dark shape inside of conventional explosive) 8. Detonating device (varies greatly; Anything to close the circuit and set off the detonating head.) 9. Power source (something to give the charge for the detonating device) Now, how does this all work? Well, let's start out at the beginning: The detonating device is triggered. By a switch, by a timer, by whatever, it's triggered. This causes the detonating head to set off the conventional explosive, which in turn sends the U-235 forward. The velocity must be great enough that when the two pieces of U-235 collide they fuse, causing critical mass to be achieved. This, in turn, sets off a fission reaction, which produces the large amounts of energy of the atomic blast. The U-238 shield is in place to block the release of excess neutrons; The lead shield protects from radiation when handling and directs the blast from the conventional explosive in the right direction. Of course, this is all from memory, and I may be off on one or two things, but the basic concept is right.