TITLE: The Gates of Knowledge NAME: Ryan Pearl COUNTRY: USA EMAIL: flipturn2001@aol.com WEBPAGE: http://www.universityswimclub.com TOPIC: Surrealism COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: knowledg.jpg RENDERER USED: Bryce 5 TOOLS USED: PhotoImpact 6 (for terrain modelling) RENDER TIME: 1 hour 16 minutes HARDWARE USED: Pentium 4, 2.4 Ghz IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hmm, let's see. I was skimming through some old books, and saw Jonathon Livingston Seagull. So... I started with this: 'Chiang spoke slowly and watched the younger gull ever so carefully. "To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is," he said, "you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived..." The trick, according to Chiang, was for Jonathan to stop seeing himself as trapped inside a limited body that had a forty- two-inch wingspan and performance that could be plotted on a chart. The trick was to know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once across space and time. Jonathan kept at it, fiercely, day after day, from before sunrise till past midnight. And for all his effort he moved not a feather- width from his spot. "Forget about faith!" Chiang said it time and again. "You didn't need faith to fly, you needed to understand flying. This is just the same. Now try again..." Then one day Jonathan, standing on the shore, cloising his eyes, concentrating, all in a flash knew what chiang had been telling him. "Why, that's true! I am a perfect, unlimited gull!" He felt a great shock of joy. "Good!" sad Chiang, and there was victory in his voice. Jonathan opened his eyes.' ... And went on from there. I didn't really have a purpose --- but that's what surrealism is about, eh? There might just be a method to my madness. I wouldn't know. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Pretty basic Bryce 5. I used a combination of the terrain editor and PhotoImpact 5 to create the mountains in the background. The textures are all custom, as is the sky. A great deal of this image was in the composition rather than the texturing. I didn't find out about this competition until last week, so I would have put more work into the bump maps and texturing had I had time.