EMAIL: s_lumini@hotmail.com
NAME: Stephen Lumini
TOPIC: Horror
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: An Explosion
COUNTRY: Canada
WEBPAGE: N/A
RENDERER USED: Povray 3.1
TOOLS USED: Moray,sPatch,Pov 3.1, Paint Shop Pro
RENDER TIME: 6 hours 37 minutes
HARDWARE USED: PII-400 - 128M of RAM
IMPORTANT IMAGE VIEWING DETAIL:  One of the major elements of the image is the faintly reflected face of the astronaut now stranded on the moon.
Please view with the contrast of the monitor set to max and increase the brightness until you are just, just able to make out the gasping face.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:  The atmosphere ignites, the fire storms are continent wide, cracks rip through the mantle.  Nine human beings survive the annilation of Earth, trapped on the moon.  

Even with no signal from Earth there is work to do.  Having unloaded the welding equipment from the mini shuttle, the astronaut looks up at the Big Blue Marble and suddenly realizes why there has been no signal.  In shock he stumbles back a couple of steps, unconsciously reaching for his family.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
The reflection is really just a sphere with an image map and filtering and transparency.
The planet is an intersection between a sphere and a union of translation sweeps.  A sort of  jigsaw puzzle of sweeps.  The "fire" is emitting media - truth to tell, I'm not sure why they work - I tried a couple of  different setting and when they looked good, I stopped changing things.
The crater is a heightfield.
The hand/arm is a sPatch object I made.
Everything else is pretty much Primitives and CSGs.