EMAIL: msarns@ufl.edu
NAME: Maurice Sarns
TOPIC: Fortress
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Meanwile, 130 miles south of the geographic north pole...
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: http://www.afn.org/~afn29467/
RENDERER USED: MacMegaPov0.7 X PPC feb 2 2001
TOOLS USED: MacMegaPov0.7 X PPC feb 2 2001, Photoshop
RENDER TIME: 2 hours 50 minutes 
HARDWARE USED: Macintosh G4 350 mhz
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

     The Fortress of Solitude (tm), just as Big Blue (tm) is off on an errand

     ...probably just Brainiac (tm) messing with the Van Allen belts
     (tm: Jack Kirby, I'm sure) again.

     For the comic geeks out there, this portrayal is based on Curt Swan's
     (tm) final rendition of the Fortress (tm) in the gotterdamurung 
     (C:Richard Wagner) two-parter from 1986, "Whatever Happened to the Man
     of Tomorrow?" (C) --as is the quote, from the _auteur_, Alan Moore. 
     'Gold Key' (tm) details are according to the "Limited Collectors' 
     Edition Presents: Superman (tm) vs the Flash (tm)" special Fortress of
     Solitude (tm) section from 1976.
          
     All trademarked and copyright characters, subjects, and writing cited 
     and alluded to in this work remain completely the property of their 
     respective holders. Really.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

     The mesas are a height field, hand-crafted in PhotoShop. The Mesas and
     plane are covered with a surface normal for all that ginchy surface
     detail.  --I have long puzzled about how snow would glue on to the sheer
     face of a mesa, but, if that is the way Mr. Swan thought it should 
     look, that's the way I'll do it. 

     Three fogs: One a broad 1-foot-high absorption ground fog that blurs the 
     horizon and reduces reflection from the plane. The second a 12-foot-high
     emitting fog aroud the base of the Fortress mesa that blurs the abrupt 
     change from height field to plane. The third is a big cylinder filled
     with an absorption fog to darken and smooth the scene.

     Horizon: A CSG cylinder with pigment=black encircles the scene to cut 
     off stars at the horizon. An emitting sphere with a gradient layered on 
     a cylindrical pattern provides the horizon glow.

     Star Field courtesy of Chris Colfax Galaxy Generator: 
     http://

     Aurora is an emitting CSG cylinder with a density composed of a color 
     map on a gradient y, run through waves, and then put through a 
     cylindrical pattern with a frequency of 10. It doesn't make a lot more 
     sense when you see the code.

     The streak representing Big Blue is a tear-shaped CSG with alternating 
     blue and red emitting densities.

     Key and Door are CSGs with a gold texture.
     
     Border and narrative captions are two CSGs, painfully aligned to the
     front of the camera (Do that first, next time.) and set as a 
     "looks_like" light source with a major falloff.