TITLE: First Encounter with Artificially created Life NAME: Caleb Hattingh COUNTRY: South Africa EMAIL: caleb@chemeng.uct.ac.za TOPIC: "First Encounters" Competition ending 31 Dec 98 COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: life.jpg ZIPFILE: life.zip RENDERER USED: Povray for Windows 3.0 TOOLS USED: Moray for Windows 3.0, Spatch RENDER TIME: Settings: 800x600 Anti-aliasing 0.2 Jitter 0.5 Rays 2x2 Computer Specs: Intel Celeron 300MHz 32 Mb RAM Time taken: Parse: 0 hrs 8 min 56 sec Trace: 35 hrs 28 min 37 sec Total: 35 hrs 37 min 33 sec IMAGE DESCRIPTION: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Quarter to 1. The alarm on his watch had scared him a little. He knew of course that there was no reason to be nervous, since he had been performing amateur organic scientific experiments for years now. He knew he was close to something special, but he did not know for sure. He added maybe 2 or 3 drops more of his protoplasmic blue syrup, and suddenly, without warning, a translucent green monstrosity, grew up and out of the evaporating dish he was working in. His last thoughts were not of fear, nor anger. They were of pride. ------------------------------------------------------------------- The green thing is the artificially created life-form. Uh-huh, yep, I know it is not immediately obvious from the picture; I also realise I will probably lose many points for this, judging from the comments from previous rounds. Had I wanted the topic to be immediately evident from the picture, I would have done a UFO-meets-humans type picture, and I am sure there are going to be many of those. I wanted to do something a little bit different. The Erlenmeyer flask (one with the blue liquid) holds the protoplasm, The test-tubes serve as general purpose holders. This is a conscientious scientist. Anyone who has worked in a lab knows that the usual general purpose containers include pencil-cases, coffee mugs and even pockets (get that phosphorus outta there sonny). The test-tubes are held in a rack that is identical to the ones we have in my lab, you may have seen different ones, in case it seems my modelling sucks (although truth be told, it does suck). The woody looking thing is a table. 'Nuf said. Clearly, this is a very simplistic scene. I could have put in more, but I grew fond of the relationship between the objects in the scene. Visually, there is a lyrical interplay between the 'organic' life-form and the curves in the glassware, and the objects were arranged (on purpose btw) to pull the viewers eye towards the top right of the scene (try it). The darkness then pulls the focus around the edges of the picture to the bottom left and the cycle continues (that art class in school payed off bigtime). My sole intention was to create a picture with atmospheric and visual appeal. So don't penalise me too heavy on the topic thing. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: The glassware is easy - rotational sweeps in Moray. Moray is superb. The life-form is an Spatch model. Spatch is very superb. The test-tube holder is your classic block and sphere CSG differences. The scissors (yes that is a pair of scissors) was also Spatch, as well as the spatula. Note the following: 1) the scissors could have been done better - the handles are pathetic 2) the spatula is still too thick 3) the lifeform has a stupid deformation on the "body" in the front - its not smooth there (I dragged a point by mistake and there was no undo) 4) the wood texture is very good, I think 5) the light effects *inside* the life-form were exacltly the effects I was hoping to achieve - it looks really cool 6) The liquid in the flask is very shiny - thats cause I stuck a light inside it. I always wondered what that would do. Thats All Folks - good luck to all other entrants