EMAIL: wmp506@bham.ac.uk NAME: Bill Pragnell TOPIC: Imaginary Worlds COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Fortress COUNTRY: UK WEBPAGE: None at present RENDERER USED: POVray 3.0 TOOLS USED: No others RENDER TIME: up to 10 hours development, approx. 45mins render time. HARDWARE USED: Pentium 266, 32MB RAM IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A futuristic stronghold in an otherworldly setting, surrounded by an oversized maze. Simple, eh. IMAGE CREATION DESCRIPTION: This is an image I have had in mind for some time, this round providing an adequate excuse to realise it. I started with a simple sketch of what I had in mind, and built the image up by hand. I was quite surprised by how little the final image differed from my original sketch; usually the mind's eye is quite heavy on peripheral vision which is difficult to get across using a raytracer. There is nothing particularly sneaky here; the maze I sketched separately and hand-coded in cubes with a trusty calculator. It is not as big as it looks; the camera angle is about as high as I could manage without losing the sense of scale. The fort is simple CSG with eight layers of texturing (although to be fair six of them are the image-maps for the windows etc). The image maps were created on my loyal Acorn Archimedes and converted to GIF files with whatever shareware I had lying around. I actually included battlements, but in the end they aren't visible from that distance. The fog, etc is all basics (tip - make your sky horizon the same colour as the fog for extra depth). I was going for high-level cloud but it looked too normal so I thought some lower, mistier cover would further help with the impression of size. It did. The one part I am quite proud of are the planets in the sky - I am constantly admiring other people's planets whilst wondering how to do 'em myself. The sky isn't a sky sphere, but actually a normal, transparent sphere with the planets outside (of course objects can't be placed outside the in-built sky sphere). This is basically how the moon gets its blue-tinted shadow in real life. The obelisks and bridges were all afterthoughts, although I think I spent rather too long on detailing the bridges. I usually like to keep my images fairly simple - for a start, as an undergraduate student I don't have a great deal of time on my hands, or my hands on a great deal of flashy hardware. This round's topic I think is the best kind, with plenty of scope for surreal and otherworldly fantasy. My view is that if you can go out and take a photo of it, it ain't worth raytracing.