EMAIL: veijo.vilva@animal.helsinki.fi NAME: Veijo Vilva TOPIC: Future COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: The Abode of Grand Master Deep Ruby COUNTRY: Finland WEBPAGE: http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/people/vilva/ RENDERER USED: POVray 3.5 TOOLS USED: Gimp for down-scaling, jpeg conversion RENDER TIME: 100h (5000x6000) HARDWARE USED: P4, 2.4GHz, 1Gb IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The future isn't what it used to be, the world today is not what I in my late teens some forty odd years ago thought it would be, we are not there yet and we are far beyond it in many respects. So I think an image of the future ought to contain both familiar objects and objects the purpose of which we cannot perhaps even begin to guess. And so it is with this image. I have tried to depict the abode of chess master Deep Ruby as she herself might "see" it. It isn't entirely clear which parts of the image reflect a physical reality - if any. Everything may be virtual or a mixture of real and virtual or even just symbolic. The thingies with eyes may be real images of physical perimeter sentinels or some arbitrary representations of them or perhaps icons of antiviral agents roaming within the memory space of the AI. The harpsichord may be an operational music instrument or a nostalgic piece of furniture or an input device with the transparent sheet of music serving as a display device, or it might be just a part of 3D wallpaper. The visualization in the sense of both physical and virtual design is a matter of purely aesthetic choice as is the nature of the presence of objects. The future has many aspects: there is the hope, and there is the everyday, and there are the more sinister undercurrents requiring constant vigilance. I have tried to include all these moods in a single image, intentionally making the relationships between objects somewhat vague and fluid in this 2D snapshot. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: The image was created just adding one tiny detail or set of details after another around the ruby sphere representing the AI core, grafting, pruning and rendering views from various angles till I was fairly sure I was there. Technically, the most notable thing is the texturing as most of it consists of CSGs. The layering of the clouds and the ground fog is a result of reflections from two thin sheets of glass, which also reflect some of the objects in quite devious ways. I didn't use radiosity as it was extremely slow in this image and also changed the mood of the lower part of the image in a way which contradicted my aims. The interaction of photons and the small spheres around and within the ruby sphere produces quite interesting effects in various parts of the image and also causes some problems in targeting - some of the objects have to be OFF during the collecting phase and ON during rendering in order to avoid most of some unwanted phenomena. The harpsichord and some other features of the image are a kind of my trademark or signature and certainly haven't been used out of laziness.