TITLE: Parched mankind. NAME: Nico Kocks COUNTRY: Germany EMAIL: cox@gmx.at WEBPAGE: http://www.kocksi.de TOPIC: Desert COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: nk_desert.jpg RENDERER USED: Povray 3.5 TOOLS USED: Corel Photopaint for conversion and image map creating RENDER TIME: 2h 18m 04s HARDWARE USED: Duron 1200, 256 MB Ram IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Everyone is talking about global warming, melting ice caps, dramatically changing weather and floods all over the world. This truly is a problem, but only a few recognize that our most important resource is going to vanish: drinking water. There´re already wars about water sources. Anyway, we´re using drinking water to irrigate golf cources, gardens and to flush our toilets. Therefore we won´t drown in a flood, we´ll die with thurst. That´s what this picture metaphorically stands for. For further information about drinking water visit: http://studiengang-wasser.de/ DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: The source file is a joke... I created this image within 3 hours. I was just experimenting with isosurfaces and at one point (which was a coincidence) the result remembered me of a "round" desert, hence this idea. For earth I used an isosurface with an image and a crackle pattern, finally textured with an image map. I didn´t use a image with the real topography of the (empty) oceans, because the planet would hard to be recognized as earth. Therefore a flat ground for the oceans. Secondary I oversized the relief a little for same reasons... For the atmosphere I used a media which I slightly translated towards the light source, because I disliked an emitting atmosphere on the shadowside of earth. Additionally I tried to make it look really thin, because a loss of water would reverse the greenhouse effect and volatilise the atmosphere at one point (like on mars). The starfield is actually a skysphere with a bozo texture. The moon is just a sphere with an image map. I know that there is no chance to gain a good place with this image, but I hope you´ll enjoy anyway... For any questions, please write me!