EMAIL: bobzien@acpub.duke.edu
NAME: William Bobzien
TOPIC: Magic
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: "Transmutracing"
COUNTRY: USA
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.02 for Windows
TOOLS USED: Paint Shop Pro 4.12 (JPEG conversion), sPatch, Texture
            Editor
RENDER TIME: ~20 minutes
HARDWARE USED: P166, 16 Mb RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology" and so on--I'm sure this won't
be the only entry to quote the venerable Arthur C. Clarke. My advanced
technology--raytracing. Sketches on graph paper transformed to lines of
code which then create a synthetic image? Magic!

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
All objects in this scene are either primitives or CSG objects, except
for the cauldron, which was created in sPatch (thanks, Mike!).

The flames on the torches are halos. The "sketches" on the "graph
paper" are the intersection of the objects with a box only slightly
taller than that used for the main surface. A similar technique
created the lines of "code" in the middle of the transmutation. All
textures were created by hand, although the seed of the Tarnished_Brass
texture on the crystal ball's mounting came from puttering about
with Phillipe Mazan's Texture Editor program.

Thanks to Chris Colefax, whose "starfld.inc" #include file created the
background stars, representing the infinite possibilities of
raytracing.

And thanks to the POV Team, without whose program I might never have
discovered this magic within me.