Competition entry for August 1995, news:comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing File : kbb_aw1.jpg Author : Kevin B Black l_kbb@vb.nwl.ac.uk kbb@toucan.win-uk.net Subject : Alien Worlds Title : First Landing, Ghauri 4 (see story) Machine : Developed on a 486DX4-100@50 running Windows for Workgroups 3.11 12 hours 9 minutes 34.00 seconds (see stats) Renderer : POV 2.2.ibmicb Tools and utilities : The spacecraft were designed on graph paper, and then hand coded into the POV-Ray description language. Simple Fortran programs were written to simplify a) the generation of the docking linkage that connects the grey flight module to the lifting bodies. b) generate textures for the panels that make up the lifting bodies. c) generate "things" to be placed in the rings system around the large planet (although two items were added by hand for effect). GEODOME V1.0 was used to create the geodesic spheres used for the "radar housing" (it's on the island) and the "habitation" huts. The plasma fields used for the landmasses are from a fractal generation program, and have been hand edited (for various reasons) using Picture Publisher 4.0. All the rest was coded straight in by hand. The story : This scene depicts the first two Zkirtian colony preparation team transport ships arriving on Ghauri 4, which is in the Tanee system. The spacecraft on the ground is the Viola, and the spacecraft in flight the Yasmeen. The Zkirtain colonization preparation team have named the site, Aqi Fhhuray (First Landing)! Things left undone due to insufficient time : More work could have been done on the lighting in the scene, problems resulted from wishing to illuminate the planets from the side so that they show as cresents. So the foreground scene had to be illumiated with spotlights. The spacecraft look green, probably due to the lighting arrangements, they should be a stronger yellow colour. The panels of the spacecraft should show up better. Problems : A bright spot can appear on the pod of the spacecraft in flight as a result of removing the shadow from this spacecraft produced on the other for the final render. There was no time left to find the reason for this, or correct the problem, which seems intermitant. Rendering stats : POV-Ray Options in effect: +v1 +ft +mb25 +a0.250 +j1.000 +r3 -q9 -w800 -h600 -s1 -e600 -k0.000 -mv2.0 -iaw1.pov -oaw1.tga -l\povray\scenes -l\povray\include Warning in file aw1.pov line 440 No pigment type given Persistence of Vision Raytracer Ver 2.2.ibmicb aw1.pov statistics Image Resolution 800 pixels wide x 600 pixels high # Rays Calculated : 3516296 # Pixels Calculated : 480800 # Pixels Supersampled : 99770 Ray - Shape Intersection Tests Type Tests Succeeded Percentage Sphere 748077565 11445040 1.53 Triangle 127780 16181 12.66 Box 278910305 79429492 28.48 Cone\Cyl. 296451075 95428312 32.19 Quartic\Poly 33213856 2095104 6.31 Height Fld 11226714 761189 6.78 Bounds 6996433 5799180 82.89 Clips 110638 33298 30.10 Calls to Noise Routine : 2985699 Calls to DNoise Routine : 5056708 Shadow Ray Tests : 4954222 Shadow Cache Hits : 2153059 Blocking Objects Found : 2330500 Reflected Rays : 550081 Transmitted Rays : 1587485 Rendering Time : 12 hours 9 minutes 34.00 seconds Additional info : Some additional images related to kbb_aw1.jpg can be found by looking at the bottom of the page pointed to by URL http://www.nwl.ac.uk/ih/wwwres.html. Please note however, that this is a temporary location and it will be moved at a later date.