TITLE: Hell's Gate NAME: Bob Franke COUNTRY: USA EMAIL: bobfranke@halcyon.com WEBPAGE: http://www.halcyon.com/wordsltd/pov/pov.htm TOPIC: Imaginary Worlds COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: hellgate.jpg ZIPFILE: hellgate.zip RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.1a (Windows 95) TOOLS USED: POV-Ray editor Poser 2 John P. Beale's Height Field Lab (HF-Lab) Keith Rule's 3D file conversion utility, Wcvt2Pov. Photostyler for jpeg conversion and copyright note RENDER TIME: 6 hours 36 minutes HARDWARE USED: Pentium-133 w/ 64 Mb RAM IMAGE DESCRIPTION: I am sure many will disagree, but for me, Hell is an imaginary world. People all over the world believe in some sort of life after death. Many also believe in the two principal destinations for the soul, Heaven and Hell. I choose Hell for my image because it is much more interesting to contemplate. The image shows a portal like gateway. The gate keeper rings the bell to announce to all another lost soul is about to enter. The two women, who have become part of the columns, are the lucky ones. They did not have to enter. Immediately after entering, there is a steep 500 foot decent to the Valley Of Despair. This is a dark featureless land where nothing happens and nothing ever will. Two miles in the distance and to the left there is a fiery glow, maybe this is the way to go. To the right it is still dark, surely this darkness and despair does not go on forever. Which way should I go?. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: The gate keeper and stone women were created with Poser 2 and converted with Wcvt2Pov. Please do not get upset with the nude women and clothed man. Nude women are simply more beautiful than men. The landscape is made with four height fields, created with Height Field Lab. The bell is a difference of two Surface of Revolution objects. The cobble stones are a bunch of randomly rotated superellipsoids. Although not very apparent, two layers of ground fog are used. The flames are done with interior and media. Every thing else is simple CSG. The scene has six light sources and was traced with anti-aliasing at +A0.5. To save space, the height fields and Poser objects are not included. Special thanks to: N.B. and Glenn McCarter for leading me in the right direction for the flames. Karl Manning for his example of using granite as the normal to create a stone texture.