EMAIL: rexm@xmission.com
NAME: Rex McDonald
TOPIC: Time
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
RENDERER USED: PovRay 3.0 Beta (Win95)
TOOLS USED: Moray, GForge, Windows Paintbrush, Graphics Workshop
RENDER TIME: 25 Hours
HARDWARE USED: Intel 486-66, P90

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
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    Could you do this one without showing a clock?  I started out with a
stopwatch, and decided to use the stopwatch as a motif for a "thought
provoking" image about time and creation.
    Stopwatches symbolize the passage of time, while in the foreground the
remains of an ancient civilization lie in front of a star system that's
experiencing it's own rebirth.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
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    I modelled the ringed planet, Roman Ruins, Sundial, and Stop-watches
originally in Moray 3.0, as well as set up initial texture mapping.
    I then modified the stopwatch model with True-Type font references
including Times New Roman and Lucida Handwriting (For the Watch Logo)
    The image is antialiased due to the problems of getting realistic
starfields using tiny, scaled bozo patterns.  Image Maps seemed to produce
unrealistic results.
    I used Gforge and two height fields to get the sand dune / crater effects
for the foremost planet floor.
    Atmospheric effects were added in tandem with fade_distance and fade_power
to get the hazy lighting effects (point lights only).
    Finally, two emitting halos (the nebula and gas rings) were added.
They use a high jittering constant to reduce banding and give the illusion
that the gasses are madeup of many particles.