EMAIL:nargy@yahoo.com NAME:Nicolas Argyrou TOPIC:Speed COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE:One atomic time unit before light speed WEBPAGE: COUNTRY:France RENDERER USED:Povray v3.6.1 TOOLS USED:Linux 2.6, vim (powerful 3d editor:), ImageMagick (jpeg conversion) RENDER TIME:2h 06m 25s HARDWARE USED:"AMD Sempron(TM) 2400+" 1.666GHz IMAGE DESCRIPTION: This picture, taken at the beginning of the Earth-Mars electro-photonic spaceway, shows a FC7 shuttle just before it enters the speed of light. It shows sparckles and time diffraction that appear around the shuttle before the light bang. Three cameras were burned by the explosion before the atomic shield could trigger in time, and makes this picture the closest from light speed. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: In fact, it took me three failed attempts to find a subject to the IRTC. I was going to more complicated scenes but also was afraid I could run out of time. So I chose something quite easy and fast to render. The spaceship is made of CSGs: spheres, cones, boxes. Textures are made with the wonderful 'turbulence' keyword of povray. The "electro-photonic" field is made of emission particules with the 'crackle' pattern. The sparckles are made with a 'black_hole warp' and are randomly disposed at the spaceship's border. The "time diffraction" is made with repetition of the spaceship with semi- transparent textures. The title is a thin text placed near the camera. The title's background is a small semi-transparent box. The scene is rendered at a 1600x1200 resolution with little antialiasing, then converted to 1024x768 to fit the 250K JPEG requirement.