APCU by Bill Marrs, July 1995 ============================= APCU - Azad's Personal Communications Unit. This is intended to be something you might see in a magazine advertisement some time in the not so distant future. The device is a palm-sized communicator. The cut-out sphere in the foreground is intended to house the user's thumb. The thumb-print of the user is thus scanned and used to encrypt the data being sent and received. Next to the thumb holder are 3 buttons which control the main function of the unit. HOLO enables the holographic display, FLAT enables the flat screen display, and VOICE enables the speaker (located in the foreground - the long black fuzzy rectangle). Next to the speaker is a round microphone. The pointy object with 3 rings around it on the right side of the unit is the antenna. In the foreground on the right are two inset colored cones. These are intended to be fiber-optic connectors for interfacing the unit with some other system. The use of an alien image is intended only as a eye-catcher for the advertisement. Azad Electronics make not claim that its customers will be able to communicate with an alien race. Artist's comments: ================= I decided to make this image on a large scale. This turned out to be a bit of a pain because POVsb isn't so great at handling outward zooming. I wasted a lot of time re-zooming to the lowest zoom factor available. I ran out of time making this. If I had more time I would have used font3d lettering on the buttons instead of gifs. Then I could have made them translucent and added some glow to them. Also, I would have liked to eliminate the shadows on the screen (do holograms give off shadows?). I wanted the grid under the thumb guard to look more like it was glowing, but I was never able to get the lighting effect that I wanted, especially without adding more reflection to the Alien's face. Ah well, I am still pleased with the picture. I've been wanting to do some kind of Alien image, so I finally found a way to work it in as an ad gimmick. I had no idea that next month's topic would be "Alien Worlds". Maybe I can re-use my alien's head for that, it's a place to start. The scene had been taking 1.5 hours to trace until I added the nebula image in the background. The time needed to draw increased by 5X (7 hours) at that point. The nebula background really made the scene though. It was well worth the extra time to trace. I didn't include the raw output for the 3D lettering generated by font3D. It has been imported into the POVsb file and the POV file. I used the "times" true type font and format=RAW (so that I could import into POVsb). Tools: ===== POVsb A windows scene builder. I used this to create every object except for the alien head and the 3D lettering (although even these were imported into POVsb and manipulated there). Winblob Blob Sculptor for Windows. I created the alien head with this tool, then imported that into POVsb Font3d A DOS utility for converting true type fonts into 3D objects as you might have guessed the "Make Contact" was made by Font3d. Winpov08 An unofficial Windows compile of Povray. While I didn't use it for the image you see presented, I did use it quite a bit while working on the scene. tgatoppm Part of the netpbm package. I used this to convert from Targa to PPM. xv A Unix picture file manipulator. I used this to convert my PPM image into jpeg. xpaint I used this to add the 2D lettering (ad copy). Pentpov A Pentium enhanced compile of Povray. I used this several times along the way and for the final render. (all of the above programs are available on the Net) Image: ===== The image you see was rendered on a 90 MHz Pentium PC. POV-Ray Options in effect: +v1 +fd +mb25 +a0.300 +j1.000 +r3 -q9 -w800 -h600 -s1 -e600 -k0.000 -mv2.0 -iapcu.pov Resolution 800 x 600 Time For Trace: 7 hours 10 minutes 8.00 seconds Files: ===== apcu.psb - The POVsb file. apcu.pov - Povray scene file as generated by POVsb (with some minor pathname changes to enable better portability) screen.gif - Gif image for the PCU's screen. To make this, I repositioned the camera in my scene, centered on the Alien Head - then traced that image for a snapshot. Later I added a red nebula (m16.gif) to the background. alienh.blb - The alien head blob file created by Blob Sculptor (this is minus the eyes which I added in POVsb) mydefs.inc - A file which contains a few textures that I needed to create myself. include.inc - A file used by POVsb to allow for includes, here is where I include mydefs.inc flat.gif - simple gif image for one of the buttons holo.gif - simple gif image for one of the buttons voice.gif - simple gif image for one of the buttons m16.gif - A gif image of The Eagle Nebula in Serpens (NGC 6611) obtained from http://force.stwing.upenn.edu:8001/~jparker/astronomy/nebulae/m16.html (You can find anything on the Net) m31.gif - A gif image of The Andromeda Galaxy in Andromeda (NGC 224) obtained from http://force.stwing.upenn.edu:8001/~jparker/astronomy/galaxies/m31.html Comments? ========= Please email any comments or criticisms to bill@atria.com.