TITLE: The Sarcophagus NAME: Simon de Vet COUNTRY: Canada EMAIL: sdevet@istar.ca WEBPAGE: http://home.istar.ca/~sdevet TOPIC: Ruins COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: chernoby.jpg ZIPFILE: chernoby.zip RENDERER USED: POV-Ray MegaPOV 0.4 TOOLS USED: Moray, Rhino RENDER TIME: ~45 minutes HARDWARE USED: Pentium 266 IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A symbol of the most important ruin of recent memory. The Chernobyl Unit 4 Reactor lies encased in a concrete Sarcophagus, over 10 years after the disaster. Like another memorable ruin, this one holds a curse. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: I decided on this image fairly soon after the topic was announced. I wanted to avoid the cliches of egyptian tombs and greek temples and portray something a little closer to home, a little more contemporary. The Chernobyl reactor seemed to be the perfect choice - a ruin, still dangerous, and still important. Even though it's encases in reinforced concrete, it doesn't go away. The cooling tower was created first, soon after the topic was announced. It sat on my hard drive, gathering digital dust for most of the round. Exams and assignments took much of my time, and I abandoned the image entirely. Then, on February 28th, 1 day before the image was due, I started working again. In a mad rush of modelling, texturing, and composition the image took form. On February 29th final improvements were made, and the image was finished just in time. This is my first return to primitives since I bought a copy of Rhino in the summer. All objects were laid out by hand, based on a number of images I found at http://insp.pnl.gov:2080/?chorninit/chorninit . The scale is uncertain, as all dimensions had to be judged by eye. All texturing is procedural, and my proudest achievement of the image. No image maps were hurt in the creation of this image. It should be noted that the actual Unit 4 is not this dirty. It's actually a rather cheerful blue. I took some artistic liberties in enhancing the ruin. I am glad to finally return to the IRTC, and look forward to voting again, if exams and assignments don't get to me first :) The final image was rendered in MegaPOV 0.4, using area lights and radiosity. By removing the radiosity (not a major difference, really), it should be renderable in standard POV. The .zip file contains the .pov and .inc files necessary to render the image, and the .mdl for Moray users. It also contains a few images of the cooling tower, which is more detailed than the final image indicates. Thanks go to: "Chornobyl Initiatives (http://insp.pnl.gov:2080/?chorninit/chorninit)" - An amazingly thorough site, which served as my primary reference. "Chernobyl : insight from the inside, Chernousenko, V. M." - An interesting book, with great images of the cooling tower Margus Ramst - who aided me with cryllic translations (which didn't make it to the final image) and for pointing me in the direction of the website above. povray.binaries.images - Who gave some last minute comments on my image. Robert Mickelsen - who created the (modified) seabirds I have flying high in the sky Kibo - I'm allowed.