EMAIL: karl@tgis.co.uk
NAME: Karl Manning
TOPIC: Science Fiction
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
RENDERER USED: POVRAY Dos v 2.2
TOOLS USED: Lots of graph paper. Paintshop Pro to convert to jpg
RENDER TIME: 8 hours (about)
HARDWARE USED: 486 75mhz
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
I thought this theme was rather difficult to do anything original with
as ray tracers lend themselves to alien/robot/spacehip forms. I was
originally going to do a band performing on stage, but I wasn't very
happy with it. I was discussing it with a friend, when he said you don't
see aliens doing "normal" things like their laundry, the washing up or getting
stuck in traffic jams. The last one appealed to me and several sketches later
traffic was born.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
This was done slightly differently from my normal raytracing. A rough
sketch was made (this is normal enough) but I then traced it on to graph
paper and used that to generate the coords. It means that all the objects in
picture have not been scaled (except for one of the ufos where I couldnt
count the squares properly!) and have just been placed in the picture.

All coordinates were worked out by hand, including bezier patches

This could be sub-titled "an exercise in boxes and blobs"! All the
aliens are blobs and all the buildings are based on boxes

The "classic" flying saucer is made up of a few cones and spheres

The red and blue "sportster" ufos are made of some squashed toruses and
bezier patches.

The yellow bus is a cylinder diff'd with several boxes to give the cut out
for the windows. The passengers on board are two of the original aliens I
created for the band. It seemed a shame to waste them !

The buildings are made of various boxes either diff'd or intersected
together. Most had a crand texture added to them, although this seems to
has been lost somewhat by the anti-aliasing.

The glass used through out was based on the standard glass texture. However
when I was just using the Glass texture, several things became apparent.
First the images were distorted. Secondly, you couldnt see the glass.
Third the colours were not correct.

The first was caused by having a high reflective index. A sphere is a
solid (unlike a cone/cylinder which could be hollow) and so an object
inside a sphere was greatly magnified. Got rid of refractive index value
problem solved

The second and third problems were solved by using a very light gray
colour and a high filter value. Gray doesnt distort the colours as green
does, and it allowed you to see the canopies.


I welcome any comments

Karl Manning 16/10/96

karl@tgis.co.uk