TITLE: Pandora NAME: Anne Gregory COUNTRY: CANADA EMAIL: albiaprime@aol.com TOPIC: Frozen Moment COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: pandora.jpg RENDERER USED: Povray 3.1 TOOLS USED: Moray 3.1, 3D Win, Paintshop Pro Demo, sPatch, Plant Studio RENDER TIME: 16 mins 23 sec HARDWARE USED: PentiumII 350Mhz, 196megs RAM This image is best viewed with monitor settings as follows: Set the contrast to 100. Temporarily set your desktop image to "none". This will produce a black background. There should be no visible indication of where the desktop image ends and the portion of the screen not reached by the CRT starts. (ie The desktop does not show as a dark gray box within a black frame). You may need to adjusting the screen's horizontal setting to check for this. If needed, adjust the brightness until the desktop and 'frame' are equal colours. IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The stories had been around for a long time; Pandora's Box was hidden in a cave in a remote part of Asia. For many years, scientists and relic hunters had speculated on the validity of these stories and tossed around their own theories of just where the cave was located. A keen interest in relics from a early age lead me to a career as a relic hunter. I was not to be left out of the Pandora's Box discussions and carefully documented all the stories, theories and suppositions I got wind of. Finally the day came when I was sure that I had a pretty good idea where I might find the cave, whether or not the Box was still there was another matter. Undaunted by this prospect, I set off for the remote reaches of Asia. Cave entrances are often difficult to locate as trees and vegetation commonly cover the openings. My research notes provided only limited assistance. I was at the point of giving up, spelunking in what was to be my last cave when a passageway opened up to this immense cavern. The cavern was surprisingly well lit from some unknown source - enough light to permit the growth of some rushes with a few dragonflies flitting among them. Directly ahead of me, sitting all alone on a rocky outcrop in the middle of the cave's lake was Pandora's Box. I let out an audible gasp and time seemed frozen. I stood, staring at Pandora's Box, sitting so innocently in the shaft of light that eminated from somewhere in the roof of the cave. As though caught in a moment of time, the creatures and objects around me were frozen. I barely noticed the bat that swooped close to my head as it and others of its kind flew off, startled by my presence in their cave. A pale fish hung motionless in mid jump as it attempted to catch a passing dragonfly. A droplet of water travelling from the roof above to the water below, paused as though waiting for me to walk under it so it could splash on my head. The only thing that was in motion was my mind, racing through a hundred scenarios. Should I try and retreive the Box? Would it's power force me to open it and release whatever was still inside? Should I turn around and leave, happy in the knowledge that I DID know where Pandora's Box lay hidden? If I retreived it, would it be safe in the museum that would put it on display? Would it be confiscated by government officals and destroyed? A hundred questions and no answers . . . . . . DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: The cave floor and roof were targa images created in PaintShop Pro. The roof being a positive image, the floor being a negative of the roof. The targas were read into a heightfield in Moray and scaled to give an adequate sized cavern and textured with a brown 'dirt' texture. The water was added at a level slightly below the 'zero' line on the floor heightfield thus allowing some rocky outcrops to show. It's partial transparency allows the fish in the water to be seen. The bullrush plants were created in Plant Studio, the bullrush flower stalks were added in Moray. The dragonflies and bats are made from primitives with translational sweeps for wings. The water droplet is a rotational sweep with a modified glass texture on it. The body of the fish was fashioned in sPatch, then exported and converted to a .UDO and .INC with 3dWin for use by Moray. The fins of the fish are all translational sweeps. The light shaft is my first attempt at using media. I Submit To The Standard Raytracing Competition Copyright "Pandora" is Copyright(c)2001, Anne Gregory, All Rights Reserved World Wide.