TITLE: HQ

NAME: ~Steve~
COUNTRY: Wales

EMAIL: 25ct@lineone.net
TOPIC: "Spectacular Landscapes"
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: hq.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    winPoV 3.5


TOOLS USED: 
    AC3D Trial to model the Station, the two trucks, the three little
men just behind the trucks  ;)  the two tall towers and the two round towers
with eight legs each, and not forgetting the three ships...
  

RENDER TIME: 
    It's still rendering! Oops! Finished! 4 hours, 8 minutes, 53
seconds. 
(My longest ever render)


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


   The year is 2002. That is of course, in our human terms. What year it is in
the case of these "I'm tired, and I wanna go home" pilots is anyone's guess.
They've had a hard day(?!) clearing ground for the Miners Union Company to
start their never-ending mining projects looking for Massium ore.
  Massium ore? Well, it's a denser than Platinoid metal used for constructing
under-water drilling  tool-bits. Combined with diamond, it's a serious piece of
kit for the job, you know! The boring machines use the extreme weight of
Massium to 'force' the tool-bit through known and unknown rocks, spiralling
downwards with the torque of an eighty-five ton engine behind it - this is
where diamond helps too.
  These pilots have just finished their shift and can't wait for some relaxation
at the stations' bar and eatery. They'll veer left and manouevre into the
hangar one-by-one, except that is, for the other guy who's trailing behind
having just 'cleared' some more space just over the mountainous horizon - when
he gets back, he'll be docked some credits for holding up the next shift. :(

    The HQ is based on planet Alpha because out of the three Massium-bearing
planets in this quarter, it's the only one that holds water. It's not nice,
fresh, drinkable water though, it has to go through the desalination plant
behind the HQ - which is not a bad thing because one of the by-products of this
is gold, still a much sought after metal for body adornment.

  They then sleep thinking of the work ahead of them...

   (Good job I stopped there... I could have gone on for ages!)  ;)




DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


  Heheh... yes, I know, imagination is great isn't it. ;)

  Ok, I guess this is my first serious attempt at an image for the IRTC, and I
can tell you now that I've enjoyed every minute of it, well, not 'every' minute
of it because I'm amazed that this image is even being entered - I lost the
code completely at one stage, but thankfully I'd already saved a .jpg image to
work from - that code was hard to redo. I think I need more memory, but haven't
got any as yet. So yes, it was hard to keep the 'flow' going as it were, but I
got there in the end even though the image isn't finished because I ran out of
time.

   The image was created using the AC3D trial version for modelling the trucks,
station HQ, the towers and the three little people behind the trucks, (honest!
they 'are' people and they've even got breathing apparatus on their backs!),
and of course, the three ships.

    The texture for the HQ is an image-map where I used a picture that I took of
a rusty piece of metal where the rust was in patches and not spread all over
the surface. This left some nice clear patches of the metal texture. Hopefully,
this gives a realistic finish to the HQ, but advice is most welcome in this
aspect. 

    The heightfield? Who would believe that it started as a digi image of a
frosted and dimpled window from my workshop? I scoured that HF (changing the
camera all over the place), like I was in one of those 'clearing' ships, for
the right bit, and doing that was fascinating - so many parts of an image that
were interesting and could be used but were left out, amazing. To finish the HF
off, I took a picture of a rock from our back garden and overlayed it to
produce a more realistic 'rocky' look.

     Credit goes to H.E.Day for his 'explosions', and Yann Ramin for his
'Starfield'. 

      Thanks guys!  :)
 
    Anyway, I hope it's been fun for you, and although this image isn't finished
I hope you enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed creating it. After this, I'll try
to 'finish' it.  

   Comments always welcome.

    Regards to all, and good luck.

      ~Steve~