TITLE: Seth's Playground NAME: James Moore COUNTRY: US EMAIL: jtm11@bellsouth.net TOPIC: Spectacular Landscapes COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: seth.jpg ZIPFILE: seth.zip RENDERER USED: Povray 3.5 TOOLS USED: Povray, Gimp for jpg conversion RENDER TIME: around 24hrs HARDWARE USED: Athlon MP 1.4GHz, 256MB Ram IMAGE DESCRIPTION: On the newly discovered world of Seth, named after the ancient Egyptian god of the desert and chaos, a scattered group of large, living crystals, commonly known as suncatchers, reflect the early morning sunlight as a dust storm gathers strength in the distance. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: A simple image made entirely in povray mainly to see if I could actually do it without using other tools. The sand and mountains are heightfields with leopard and wrinkle patterns. The crystals are simple csg objects with a glass texture and a slight emitting media for brightness and are there just to break up the monotony of the sand. The sky is a scattering media in front of a skysphere backplane for brightness. The sun is a sphere with emitting media. The clouds are made from a large sphere with a media density fading from 0 at the center to a wrinkle pattern at the edges. The dust is a box with a scattering media. It was originally supposed to be light dust blowing off the ground, but I accidentally got the density pattern upside down. After rendering it, I decided I liked the way it made the horizon darker, so I left it that way. I'm not quite happy with the way the mountains turned out, but converting them to isosurfaces made the render times even longer. I know render time for all the media objects really adds up, but I really like the feel I think they add to the image. As always, any comments or advice is greatly appreciated.