TITLE: Landship
NAME: Adrian Lazar
COUNTRY: Romania
EMAIL: lazara5@msn.com
WEBPAGE: -
TOPIC: Old Technology
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: landship.jpg
ZIPFILE: landship.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1g (Unofficial version, recompiled for PIII/Athlon by
Stephen Schmitt)

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray 3.3, sPatch, Gimp and Paint for textures, IrfanView for
conversion to JPEG

RENDER TIME: 
    36 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    P4 2.4GHz, 512 MB DDR266


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


        "Aarrrggghhh! Shiver me timbers! Ain't you gonna finish patching'er up?

We shoulda' been burning the roads already! I must've been crazy to get onto
this 
here bucket o' rust whith a bunch of leaky pipes and a pair of oversized
kettles,
but I tell ya it's worth every darn penny! We don't need none of them fancy
'self-loading cannons', that's fer sure! Everyone will hear about the
'Leviathan'
and scurry away in fear! "

        "... Advances in steam engine technology then made possible the
development
of steam-povered armored fighting vehicles. Soon after the end of the war people

realised that the landships were ideally suited for transportation. In less than
a
decade landship-based transport became one of the most profitable businesses.
And,
not unlike their maritime-based cousins, such wealth ended up attracting all
kinds
of people.
        Meanwhile, with the development of the self-loading cannon, the Navy
suddenly 
found themselves in possession of a very large stock of outdated ordnance.
Obviously, 
some of it found its way to black market arms dealers. And so, a group of
dubious
individuals got their hands on state of the art military equipment. Installed
aboard
crudely-armored ex-civilian landships or even decomissioned military vehicles,
these 
weapons proved deadly in the hands of ruthless pirates. These fast and
well-armed 
ironclads quickly became the scourge of the old Imperial roads. The Dark Age of
the 
Corsairs had begun ..."


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


            Well, here it is: my third entry to the IRTC. Coincidentally I had
just 
finished reading Michael Moorcock's "The Land Leviatan" when I spotted the new
IRTC 
topic and I knew what I wanted to model. 
        The objects in the scene are mostly CSG. The steam engines are partly
recycled 
from an older project. Also, the rusty armor plates are slightly modified
versions of 
the ones used in my first IRTC submission ("Ghost Ship", "Water" topic). The
crew is 
a mix of free meshes taken off the Net (especially for faces), Bezier patches
and some
SPatch meshes. 
        The smoke is a union of spheres placed by hand, with an absorbtion
media
applied to them. I also experimented with the smoke plugin but I wasn't
satisfied with
the result and, with time running out, I had to settle for this more
conventional
approach. I'm actually quite happy with the result, although I wish I had a
little more
time to tinker with the placement (but then, don't we all?).
        The barrels are slightly modified versions of the one from Moray's
Object
Library.
        If you happen to remember my first entry, you'll probably recognize the
flag.
It still uses the same texture (Yeah, Paint still finds some uses and Wingdings
has
some really neat characters :) ).
        As for the environment, the trees are created with the help of Keith
Hull's
tree plugin. The grass and the road are a single multilayered object, the grass
being 
an image map with a transparent strip down the middle for the road to show
through. 
The pond is a heightfield generated in Gimp and the water is a dark blue
material with
a ripple normal and some refractive media applied to it.

        Permission is hereby granted, without written agreement and without
license or 
royalty fees, to use, copy, modify and distribute any of the included objects
for any 
purpose, including commercial applications.

P.S. The Gear plugin included in the .zip is developed by me and is to be
considered 
an alpha version. Use at your own risk. When I consider it finished I'll
probably upload 
it to Moray's Plugin Library along with the source code. Until then you may use
it as 
you see fit, but be advised that the compatibility with this version is not
guaranteed.