TITLE: chariot
NAME: Garry J. Vass
EMAIL: 100020.777@compuserve.com
TOPIC: Flight
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: chariot.jpg
RENDERER USED: POV 3
TOOLS USED: gviewer (to convert to JPEG)
RENDER TIME: about 64 hours and 23 minutes
HARDWARE USED: 100 mh pentium
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

This image is called, "Chariot".  It depicts a representation
of Apollo's fiery chariot - which traces an arc through the sky
and is thereby pertinent to "Flight".



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

For the last two POV competitions (Summer and Science Fiction), my
entry was either late or not submitted correctly.  No matter, because
I do it for love anyway.  But this time, I was determined to get 
everything right and submitted on time.

In terms of the competition, I figured that lots of folks would
go for the X-Wing, Star Fighter type of image; and that the 
rest would probably do realistic images of airplanes and what-not.
So I needed a theme that embodied "Flight", but came from an
entirely different dimension.

Because it is comming up to the holidays, I thought I would do
a "Partridge in a Pear Tree" for a while.  I even got around
to building the tree.  It was pretty neat, and I might even
*STILL* do it. 

But then I decided to depart altogether and do something that
**NOBODY** would think of...

So I set about to design an image of Persius, arriving on the 
winged horse, Pegasus, to rescue Andromeda from the Sea Titan.  The
story goes that Andromeda was chained to a rock because her mother,
Cassandra had insulted the gods.  Persius showed up just in time and
used the head of the Medusa to turn the Titan into stone.  He and 
Andromeda rode off together on Pegasus and got married and all that.
I bet you never thought of that, huh?  And I still might even take 
a hack at it, but I would miss the deadline - mostly because I find 
it difficult to incorporate narrative content into ray traced images.
And anyway, Pegasus is a likely subject for a flight competition.

So that's when I set about to construct Apollo's chariot.  In order
to do that, you need some wheels (which, come to think of it, are
not really necessary in flight) a chariot frame, a shield hung over 
the chariot frame, a spear, and an axel.  

I figured a wheel could be made with a torus, twenty-four spokes
(one for each hour in the day), and a central hub with seven spikes
(for each weekday).

I figured the axel could be twelve units wide (the months).

The chariot body contains four ribs (the seasons) and extends along
an arc of -40 to +40 degrees (the angle of the solar plane or some
such).  Each rib connects twelve slats (the zodiac).

The union of wheels, axel, and frame is scaled to the "Golden Mean",
an arithmetic ratio discovered in classical Greece.

I then replaced the shield with a mechanical device, dropped the
spear entirely, and so much for the objects.

Once all that was put together, I had to get the whole thing 
to burn.  Or to put it more accurately, the chariot has to give
the impression of shooting out flares of sunlight.  Figuring this
out took the longest part of the the effort.  

There is an offscene sphere "behind and up" from the camera
that is textured to be a glowing mirror.  It has a radius of 400 and
I used it to rebounce rays back on to the chariot, thereby creating
some flares.  But flares have to extend out into space.

I then added three "z" planes, each rotated off to the side of 
the chariot.  This gives the effect of the flares continuing off
the body of the chariot out into the sky.