TITLE: Birth of the Blackbird
NAME: Mark Hibner
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: stumble24@hotmail.com
TOPIC: Old Technology, IRTC Stills Jan-Feb '03
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: sr71.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.5

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray; Rhino; Wings3d; Poser; PoseRay; PSP (for textures and jpg
conv)

RENDER TIME: 
    7Hrs 3Min

HARDWARE USED: 
    AMD Athlon 1Ghz, 640M Ram


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

The SR-71 Blackbird was completely designed on a 1950's sliderule. This retired
firebreathing dragon is the product of Kelly Johnson's Lockheed's Skunkworks,
and it still holds a lot of its original air records. I don't know if the
Blackbird was originally tested at Groom Lake, Nevada (more commonly known as
Area-51), but I thought it would make a perfect backdrop to the scene anyway.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The scene started with the creation of the SR-71 itself. Rhino was used to
design and loft the wireframe model of the SR-71 and the Joshua Trees. The
engine flames were created with layered media. The radar tower, hanger area,
fuel trucks, control tower and most of the other objects were created and
placed in Moray using CSGs and duplications. The barrel cactus was created in
Wings3D. The interior of the control tower started out being the camera's
origin; so unfortunately the interior was designed with a lot more detail than
was needed. I decided to change the camera location because it was too
difficult to get all of what I wanted to fit into the scene and look correct.
The yellow thing on the table in the control tower is a sliderule symbolizing
how the SR-71 was created. And finally, the Poser figures were posed, converted
through PoseRay, and added to the scene. 

A slight amount of focal blur and radiosity were used.

FINAL NOTE: 
And, as I'm sure most of you are fully aware, all of the above stated "creation
descriptions" were performed over and over at least ten thousand times...
each...

Thanks