EMAIL: hes3@lycos.com
NAME: Edward Shaw
TOPIC: Fortress
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE:  Skendaw
COUNTRY: USA
RENDERER USED:  trueSpace 4.2
TOOLS USED: trueSpace 4.2, Photoshop 5.5, Poser 4, Bryce 4
RENDER TIME: 3 hours 23 minutes
HARDWARE USED: 400 Mhz Pentium Desktop w/512 MB mem
	       SCSI hardrive
               Viper V550 Video Card w/16 MB mem
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
  Mission:  1216.028/4902.39.4 - 1220.161
  Purpose:  Domain Expansion - Status Update/New Contact
  Location:  Ven Sector/Sarkel Binary(Local: Glauzede, Brizede)/Planet 5 (Local: Drek)/3902.2097
  First Contact:  Mission 0461.030/2218.05.2 - 0477.372
  Image:  1433
  Description:  The massive belgeddium gates of Skendaw swing shut and the portcullis drops 
  behind a pair of Tevenkan Model 4 Light Guncruisers as they lumber out into the gathering 
  dusk of another long Drekkian night, on their way to relieve the watch and assume patrol 
  duties along the Fa-Kowd/Stauch frontier.  The Fa-Kowds, architects of Skendaw, trace 
  their genesis to the remnants of a colony established on Drek in 5152.031 (Old Reckoning) 
  by the failed Hellung Empire.  Abandoned and forgotten, they were, remarkably, able to 
  survive Drek's harsh planetary conditions and the relentless attacks of Stauch, but only 
  by becoming themselves harsh and relentless.  
  The Verxid Chronicles identify first established contact with the Fa-Kowds as 0477.372.  
  Presented with the requirements for inclusion in the Domain, among them being (as almost 
  any school student could recite) that "all associations extant among sentients on a given 
  planet be carried out in a state of peaceful coexistence and harmonious interaction," the 
  Fa-Kowd Glaumendik (High Council) declared themselves forced to decline.  They gave as 
  reason that with which those socio-economic experts who have since made study of the 
  situation generally concur:  that as long as the Fa-Kowds and Stauch cohabit Drek, there 
  can never be the smallest clump of undisputed Drekkian soil.  Skendaw and various other 
  similar installations stand in stark witness to the enmity that persists between the two, 
  even to this writing.
  The Chronicles relate in detail five separate attempts made by the Verxid to establish 
  meaningful contact with Stauch.  They record none of any success.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
I used Poser for a few models (yeah, ya might hafta look for 'em), Photoshop to create some 
custom textures, and that's a Bryce sky.  Everything else - modeling, lighting, final 
rendering, you-name-it - was done in trueSpace.  Pretty standard stuff.  A word about the
render might be in order:  this image was not raytraced - my machine choked when I tried to 
render in that mode, even after I had dumped a lot of unseen geometry.  I instead resorted
to a trueSpace4 lighting option called Ray Casting, which provides for accurate shadows even
in a Scanline render.  The two lights from the right use Ray Cast shadows, while the 
backlighting from the left uses shadow mapping, this because I wanted only those surfaces
in view of it to be illuminated by it and at the same time wanted (very) soft edges to what 
shadows it might create.  No magic here, but then, it doesn't seem that much of magic would 
likely be found anywhere on Drek.