EMAIL: rowens@fvcc.cc.mt.us
NAME: Rick Owens
TOPIC: Magic
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: "Master's Match"
IMAGE FILE NAME: romagic1.[png|jpg|gif]
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: http://mail.fvcc.cc.mt.us/~rowens/
RENDERER USED: Povray 3.00 for MS-DOS
TOOLS USED: Freemacs (text editor), dmake, Jih-Shin Ho's Display
            (conversion to jpeg), gforge (height map for sand floor)
RENDER TIME: 4 hours 35 minutes  30.0 seconds (16530 seconds)
HARDWARE USED: 486DX4/100, 8MB RAM
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

Two master-level mages are engaged in a bout to show students some of the
techniques and tactics involved in a mage duel.  While not quite a
no-limits brawl, the mages are not pulling their magical 'punches';
therefore, both the contestants are heavily shielded.  Too, the students
who would normally be seated on the stone steps are instead watching the
match through spy-eyes, small metal and crystal spheres designed to
augment the power of clairaudience and clairvoyance spells.  Losing a
spy-eye can cause a painful backlash, but that's minor compared to being
directly scorched by a wild energy blast! Already deflected strikes have
left fires and other things in the sands of the practice ground.  At the
moment, one master has thrown three bursts of ball lightning, and the
other is countering with a whip of magefire.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

Edit, render, repeat until more or less satisfied.  I started with a
basic idea of how it would go together (2 mages in magical combat in a
simple arena), typed in some primitives, then did a test render.  From
there I added other elements as seemed appropriate.  (Actually, I'm not
completely satisfied with the image, but the deadline is looming, so....)

In case anyone's curious, I built this image while listening to Rush
("Prime Mover" from _Hold Your Fire_ is particularly apt for raytracing,
IMHO), Capercaille, Yes, Enya, _Granuaile_ (comp. Shaun Davey, singer
Rita Connolly) and Anuna.