EMAIL: dewhurst@physnet.phys.wits.ac.za NAME: John K. Dewhurst TOPIC: First Encounter COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Cover-up! COUNTRY: South Africa WEBPAGE: - RENDERER USED: UVPOV-Ray (Unofficial version by Nathan Kopp) TOOLS USED: Spatch, Terrain Maker, Corel Draw RENDER TIME: 54 mins 22 secs HARDWARE USED: Pentium Pro 200 IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Remember when Viking's "face on Mars" turned out to be a rather unexceptional lump of rock thanks to the Mars Global Surveyor? Or so everyone thought. In reality it was a perfectly sculpted humanoid face - our First Encounter with alien intelligence. The powers that be, however, decided that the average pleb would be incapable of calmly comprehending this little revelation and so a frantic cover-up ensued. In the end the photographs of the region where the face is located were faked by the NSA (rendered with POV-Ray no less) and released to the world's media. In this scene we see President Clinton signing this dastardly plan into effect as well as the wind- and water-ravaged Cydonia region on Mars where the real face is located. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: The presidential hands and the face were created using Mike Clifton's superb S-Patch. The face was then turned into a height field using POV-Ray itself and weathered with Eric Jorgensen's Terrain Maker. To achieve the fade-out - fade-in effect without breaking the post- processing rule, the Martian surface was placed slightly above the desk and a colour map was used with variable transmittance. I thought it would be more fun to devise an alien which could have evolved in the martian conditions than simply having a human-like face. It would have to be able to survive dry conditions (xeromorphic is the word, I think) so I gave it an exoskeleton. The thin atmosphere would dictate large bony ears; and the month-long dust storms, seen recently on Mars, give the creature its articulated snout, a bit like a camel. The cover-up document itself is of course pure fiction. Some of the terms and acronyms were taken from "The Company" by John Erlichman, but beyond that it's all made up. I gratefully acknowledge the use of images and ideas from the following sites: www.whitehouse.gov (Bill's signature) mars.jpl.nasa.gov (the "faked" images ;-) www.nsa.gov Now awaiting a visit from the MIB... JKD.