EMAIL: rodlink@sprynet.com
NAME: Rod Phillips
TOPIC: science-fiction
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
RENDERER USED: Caligari trueSpace2
TOOLS USED: Corel Photo-Paint 5
RENDER TIME: app. 30 minutes
HARDWARE USED: P166 w/ 32 megs RAM, 2 meg video card, Win95
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The star-freighter Anthar Traverse rockets away from the
planet Caladaan
seeking freedom and fortune in a galaxy far, far away...
DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: The spaceship was modeled in
trueSpace2, and textured 
with image maps I created in Corel Photo-Paint 5. I made 2 copies of the maps
after I decided on 
the look I liked; the first copy was used as the "bump" map, the second was
detailed further in 
CPP5 (rust and dirt smears, flaky paint, etc.) and used as the texture map (this
was how I got 
the "paneled" look on the hull). The "engine glow" effect was accomplished by
placing a flat 
round, transparent plane (mapped with a gradient image placed at the plane's
center) behind each 
of the drive pylons. A small light was placed near each one to further
accentuate the effect 
(all this because trueSpace2 does not do "glow" or "flare" effects).
The large blue planet is a sphere mapped with a "procedural marble" texture with
vein colors set 
to blue and a yellowish color. A second, slightly larger partially transparent
sphere forms the 
"cloud cover" on the blue planet. It was also textured with procedural marble,
this time with the 
vein colors set to a transparent white and total transparency.
The reddish-orange planet is another sphere simply mapped with (again) a
procedural marble 
texture (vein colors red and bright orange). The small moon is another sphere
bump mapped with 
an inverted orange peel texture.
The lovely nebula in the background is a flat, transparent plane mapped with
(surprise!) the 
ever-versatile procedural marble texture, this time with the vein colors set to
total 
transparency and a soft magenta color. The starfield is simply an image I
created in CPP5.
To cut down on rendering time, I rendered the planets, nebula and starfield
first (render time: 
about 10 minutes). I then used this as a background image when I rendered the
spaceship.