TITLE: "Asgard"
NAME: Robert J Becraft
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: castlewrks@aol.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.angelfire.com/md2/castlewrks ------- VERYImportant.
             http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/labs/6080

TOPIC: Fortress
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: asgard.jpg
ZIPFILE: asgard.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    MegaPov 0.7

TOOLS USED: 
    Povray (image creation), I_view32 (TGAJPG conversion),
                PaintShop Pro (add copyright), FastZip98 (zip)

RENDER TIME: 
    about 5 hours 51 minutes, 270 meg

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 700


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


    This image is a conceptual image of Asgard from near the Bifrost rainbow
bridge.
    Asgard is the kingdom of the norse gods and floats above the other worlds
resting
    on the tree Yggdrasil.                                                      
  
    

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


    This image was created first by researching Asgard and the technical details
of how
    Asgard should look.  After that it was a matter of creating the objects to
carry off
    the illusion.  The fortress is a circular collection of towers replicated
around its
    perimeter.  The gate is designed as the approach off of the rainbow.  Many
of the gods
    were afraid they would break the bridge, thus treaded there very lightly.
    
    To create the illusion of the Yggdrasil tree, I spent 90% of my time messing
with a
    variety of textures, code etc.  The result is represented here...my goal was
to have
    great arms of the tree stretching upwards to support Asgard.  I also spent
alot of
    time on getting textures for the swirling clouds below Asgard to come out
right.  The
    white fog all but obscured these.
 
    Stalagtites were created by inverting the heightfields.  The fortress walls
have a
    large block scale to them since they were built by a giant who hauled large
stones
    with the aid of his horse.  He was contracted by the gods to build the wall
and would
    have received Freya as his wife.  When the gods realized he would complete
the wall by
    the contracted date, Loki distracted his horse.  The giant got pissed and
went to
    complain and was wacked on the head by Thor, killing him.

    Asgard was actually a large land-mass that contained kingdoms for each of
the gods. 
    This picture only shows the entry point to that land.  The mountains in the
background
    are part of the Asgard mountain range that separated this part of Asgard
from other
    lands.  They were created by a random repetition of heightfields and hazed
with a purple 
    fog.

    In the center of Asgard all the gods had temples.  Odin was able to look
down on man
    in Midgard from his temple, so I have represented that in the center on a
hill behind
    the giant built walls. 
  
    The final additions were some soldiers for scale and pointier stalagtites
for the
    underside of Asgard.