TITLE: Callisto
NAME: Lance Purple
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: lpurple@netcom.com
TOPIC: Imaginary Worlds
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: callisto.jpg
ZIPFILE: callisto.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray for Windows v3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    PaintShop Pro (for JPG conversion)

RENDER TIME: 
    11 h 20 m

HARDWARE USED: 
    486DX66 PC with Windows 95

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

An alien noblewoman relaxes at a resort, on the shore of Lake Krovobar
on the planet Callisto.  Unlike our Callisto, this imaginary world has
a terrestrial climate and is well outside of Jupiter's radiation belts.
About 100 km to the northwest is the capitol city of Serenis (shown in
a Frank R. Paul painting on the cover of _Amazing Stories_, Nov. 1941). 
painting

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

I've always liked that particular painting, and wanted to do something
like it for this contest topic. So:

A) went out on the Web and found a good face mesh on a grad student's
   page in Australia. (See the source file for author credits and URL)
   Converted it to POV format, and tweaked the facial expression. 

B) Using Peck's _Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist_, modelled the
   woman's head, torso, legs, and hands out of primitives. Wrote nice
   macro for the hand that uses a simple finger-clench angle.

C) Modelled the piers, and the arched bridge out of prisms, spending
   nearly a week on elements that barely show up the final scene.

D) Wrote a triangle-mesh tentacle macro for the arms, based on article
   "Calculation of Reference Frames Along a Space Curve" in Glassner's
   _Graphics Gems_ book.

E) Threw together the lizard models in a single weekend, then spent
   the rest of week 5 on the dress, jewelry, and hair some more.

G) Got to work on the water and the vegetation macros. Added faked
   caustic textures for the pier and bridge.

H) Got a jupiter texture map from NASA JPL website, modelled a simple
   jupiter plus moons scene for a backdrop texture.

I) Ooops. Only a week left. Couldn't get the hair right, so added a
   straw hat. Abandoned work on the fancy villas, and put in more
   krove-trees to fill the background.

J) Final rendering has grass leaves sticking through the tree roots,
   because I changed the nBlades param.  Dammit!  Oh well, no time
   to re-render it at T Minus 15 hours; hope the judges are impressed
   enough by the other elements of the scene to overlook it...

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| lpurple at netcom dot com  |
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