EMAIL: nk80300@ltu.edu
NAME: Nathan Kopp
TOPIC: Science Fiction
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
RENDERER USED: Povray v3.0 for Windows
TOOLS USED: Moray 2.0, Paint Shop Pro 3.0, GForge
RENDER TIME:
Time For Parse:    0 hours  0 minutes   9.0 seconds (9 seconds)
Time For Trace:   12 hours 39 minutes  12.0 seconds (45552 seconds)
    Total Time:   12 hours 39 minutes  21.0 seconds (45561 seconds)
HARDWARE USED: Pentium 75, 24Mb RAM
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

"Atlantis"

The year is 2109.  Atlantis is been discovered.  So is its secret and the
reason for its disappearence.  Thousands of years ago, the people of Atlantis
dicovered a power source of incredible magnitude.  Who wouldn't fight for
this incredibly powerful resource?

Yes, I know it's a dark image (all of mine seem to be).  But I needed the
contrast.
It's best viewed with the shades closed or at night.  Also, if you're not
viewing
"Atlantis" with TrueColor (24 bit), please use PSP or another graphics program
to dither it down to the correct # of colors.  This will remove the ugly
banding.

-Nathan Kopp

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

First, I created the two dolphin-like subs.  This design consists primarily of
a
lathe object nested deep inside a bunch of CSG's.  The lathe points were
created
in Moray, and then hand-transfered to POV3 code.  This way I could place the
object
in the scene and then just substitute the proper include file.

Next, I created the sea floor and placed the subs.  The next step was to create
the second sub design (or at least the visible part) and place it in
foreground.
To add more action to the scene, I created a laser shot from one of the subs to
the sea floor.  If you look closely, you can see that the laser shot is
creating
turbulence in the water surrounding it.

From this point on the scene became a study in atmosphere, halos, and lights. 
I
was originally using fog to give the murky effect of the water (with caustics,
of
course).  This didn't give the proper atmosphere (no pun intended), so a type 1
atmosphere was added.  (I tried type 2 & 3, but neither looked any good.) 
After
switching back to fog for quicker render times, I added halos for the smoke
cloud, 
the dust cloud (where the laser hits the ground), the gatling gun flame, and
the spotlight in the distance.  I couldn't get a bright spotlight to light the
atmosphere correctly.  Probably had something to do with the low sampling rate.

The sea floor heightfield was created with GForge, as a very modified version
of
the "lonely mountain" example.  The bump-map was created with Paint Shop Pro
3.0 (which was also used to add my name).  The majority of the modelling and
scene discription was done in Moray 2.0.  However, many of the cool features
(like halos, atmosphere, and caustics) were added later with a text editor.