TITLE: Hoop NAME: Marcus Lundberg EMAIL: melundbe@mtu.edu TOPIC: Epic Proportions COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: hoop.jpg RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.5 TOOLS USED: Photoshop 5.5 & 7, Moray RENDER TIME: ~12 hours HARDWARE USED: AMD Athlon 1.52 GHz IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Look closely. A robot in a run-down alley is playing some strange hoops. The Hoop is home to a fantasy castle and flocks of sheep, along with lakes and forests. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: When I set out to create this image, I was struck with two ideas: 1) I've never made a robot in POV-Ray, and I must remedy that, and 2) I've made this toroidal planet thing, I wonder if I can use it. Those two ideas, more than anything else, drove this thing along. Some details for those who are interested: -The Hoop is a toroidal isosurface with a Perlin noise added to it to create mountains and things. It's one of my favorite creations. Imagine life on such a thing (where would the sun go???). -I downloaded the castle from Renderocity or something ages ago. -The trees are reused from an old picture. They're just randomized blobs on cones. -The robot was created by CSG. Some parts constructed in Moray and included. -I used a Moray plug-in called CityBuilder to create the background city. -The rain was tricky to get right. They're elongated spheresweeps. -The basketball/sun is a pile of (semi)transparent spheres with media. A couple of solar flares courtesy of cones with media. It's a pity I have to submit this early, but I'm going on a trip. It'd be great to have been able to polish this more. Composition was tricky, with the extremely tiny but important things on the hoop. Have a good summer!