EMAIL: PovRayGuy@aol.com NAME: H. E. Day (Howard Earl) <>< TOPIC: First Encounters COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Midnight on the Farm or Arkansas Chickens VS. EBE's COUNTRY: USA RENDERER USED: Pov Ray 3.1 TOOLS USED: Spline.inc, GUM, Grass.inc RENDER TIME: 2 weeks (!) HARDWARE USED: Pentium 200 Mhz 32MB RAM (Final Render) and 486 DX 133Mhz 32MB (Design) IMAGE DESCRIPTION: In the middle of the night, They came. Probably the first sign of Their arrival was the extra iron nail that Farmer Ged had absentmindedly left in the coop after repairing the chicken wire. Not that the nail was there, but that it was hovering 5 feet off the ground, spinning slowly. Bob was getting his midnight snack when a brilliant flash of light slammed through the coop. Startled, he squawked and jumped back. For several seconds Bob stared. Then, convinced that this was nothing that he should worry about, he walked back to the water bin and took a deep drink of the filthy, poop ridden water. John was sleeping quietly in the middle of the coop, when something that hummed softly bumped against his rear, waking him. Suddenly curious, he swung around to get a look at this odd object. Little did he know that Joe, his life-long buddy, was getting a vital organ removed behind his back. Strangly, Joe's coop-mates noticed little change in personality and habits after the incident. Of course they usually notice nothing at all, being chickens. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Chickens + ET Livestock mutilations = Humor! When I saw the current topic, I just couldn't resist... The chickens are mostly blobs with a few bezier patches thrown in. The coop walls are made out of superellipoids, and the nails are just 2 unioned cylinders. The chicken wire is a bezier patch with a transparent .GIF texture. The beams of light are an area light shining through a sphere with a scattering media. (The 2 week render time is probably this bugger's fault, but it looked so good I just couldn't drop it.) One note: The nail in the air was a mistake. But after waiting 5 days just to get to this point I worked around it. Actually, I learned to love it.