EMAIL: art-ilc@jcu.edu.au NAME: Chris Colefax TOPIC: Science Fiction COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. RENDERER USED: PoVRay 3 (DOS) HARDWARE USED: Cyrix 5x86-100 TOOLS USED: HeightField Lab IMAGE DESCRIPTION: On a far distant planet, not unlike our own, overpollution has completely destroyed the atmosphere, turning the planet into a desert wasteland. Although forced to live mainly underground, many of the planet's inhabitants were reluctant to give up the pleasures of surface living. So, small "Dome Cities" soon sprung up across the planet, acting as windows onto the rest of the universe. These cities were equipped with giant retractable shutters which could be closed to protect the cities from the harsh rays of the sun. Like an enormous mechanical flower, one such dome city begins to cover itself as the first brilliant rays of the sun appear from behind the planet's near moon, which dominates the horizon. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: John Beale's excellent HeightField Lab was used to create the height field for the surface of the planet, as well as the cratered bump map for the moon. A sky sphere with a layered texture was used for both the stars and the emerging sun, while a flat textured disc was used to create the spiral galaxy. The planet's atmosphere is a large sphere, centred on the camera location, with a transparent texture. The city structure is composed of various portions of torii, spheres, and cylinders, and the buildings are boxes of random heights placed on a grid created using nested #while, #end statements. Finally, the lens flare is a tiny sphere centred on the camera location, with an 8-layer transparent texture (woods and radials) used to model the sun's rays and the various light halos. The whole scene was coded entirely by hand, with many, many test renders being made before managing to achieve the final result.