TITLE: RUINS ON A PARALLEL EARTH NAME: Larry Boston COUNTRY: United States EMAIL: elboston@mint.net WEBPAGE: None TOPIC: Ruins COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: rope.jpg ZIPFILE: rope.zip RENDERER USED: Povray for Windows. 3.1 TOOLS USED: Paint Shop Pro 3. , MS Paint RENDER TIME: 47 min 51 s HARDWARE USED: Pentium 166 32MEG RAM This is my first entry for the IRTC contest. I have been using POV for about 2 years, and since I am an organic chemist I primarily used POV for molecules and laboratory objects. I lost interest in POV until I I downloaded version 3.1 about 6 months ago and found it to be much more user friendly. I have been concentrating on the program for about 3 months. I used POV 3.1 only, except for using MS Paint to create the final JPEG image and Paint Shop Pro for changing the height field image to GIF. I attempted to create a scene from another world, without the use of any reference pictures. The attempts weren't very successful, therefore I went to the Library and researched ruins throughout the world and was influenced primarily by pictures of the ruins of Palmyra, Syria since my original home town was Palmyra, ME. At least the project gave me an opportunity to read about ruins that I had never heard of before. The entire project took more than 50 hours,which is much more time than I planned to dedicate to the project. Most of my objects are made from simple shapes. I was already working on making a dodecahedron, therefore I decided to keep with the pentagon theme throughout the picture. It was difficult to get the right angles for the dodecahedron.The major problem that I had was moving objects where I wanted them, especially after rotation. The next scene I do should take less time because I am upgrading my CPU to 400 and I will learn how objects move after rotation. I also will probably use some of my other programs that don't require so much time and can create animate objects easier. A special thanks to the makers of the stones files and the skies file. I toned down the phong in the granite texture so that the reflections from the stadium would'nt be excessive. I also used a multiplier in front of the background color so that I could darken and lighten the color easily.