EMAIL: samgowdy@bellsouth.net
NAME: Andrew Gowdy
TOPIC: Future (November-December 2003 Stills)
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Moon Life
COUNTRY: USA

RENDERER USED:
	POV-Ray 3.5

TOOLS USED:
	Irfanview (for jpeg conversion of final render and heightfield)

RENDER TIME:
	9 minutes 32 seconds

HARDWARE USED:
	Pentium IV
	2 GHz
	256 MB RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

 Ok, I know, another space scene. I imagine there will be alot of that this round.
However, I decided on this because I really wanted to get SOMETHING in this time. I've
started on images for 3 past IRTC rounds (Architecture, Mystery, and Surrealism) and
either never finished, or never submitted the image.

 So here's what everyone nowadays thinks we will be reduced to: living on the dreary,
colorless moon(or mars or something) looking up at the earth that we ruined.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

 I got the idea of making a "space city" type of scene from the spatialc image that
was submitted in the architecture round. (It's a very nice image even though it didn't
win)

 The macro I used to make the cities is very similar to his. It picks a random
building type, height and color. The type can be thin cylinder, thick cylinder or
box. Then they are translate to the side a random amount (less than a specified
amount), and rotated a random amount. There is no check for if a spot is free or not,
because the intersecting of some buildings wasn't obvious enough to desrve me giving
myself a headache making the checking code.

 I also used the same image map for the earth that he did. You can find it at
http://www.space-graphics.com/earthphoto.htm . I think I probably used a lower-
quality version of it that he did (there are 3 versions you can download). Also,
I didn't use the bump map because you wouldn't be able to tell whether I had used it
or not. It also has a sphere with a smoggy texture around it which obscures it a bit.

 The tunnels in between cities were originally clear, but I made them solid white
because the amount of transparency was giving me problems and I didn't want to model
cars or water/power lines and everything else that would need to go in the tunnels.

 Each crater is composed of 2 macros. One is the rim, which is a cone with a
cylinder differenced out. The other is a sphere which is differenced from the ground.

 The ground is the top of a big cylinder. That way the moon looks like it's a sphere.

 The mountains in the distance are made of a height field which is made into a ring
of hills by intersectin with 2 cylinders (one is inversed).

 The stars are a sky sphere with the standard pov-ray starfield texture converted to
a pigment. The frames are made from tori, spheres, and cylinders which are differenced
from the objec they are around so that they looks like a frame.

 All of it was typed straight into POV-Ray. The image for the heightfield was also
generated by POV-Ray. Only the earth's image map is from an outside source.

 Also, the frame on the two nearer tunnels got some nasty looking stuff on it when it
was converted to jpeg. I guess Irfanview isn't all that great at jpg conversion.
Please ignore that and if it bothers you too much the zip has everything you need to
rerender the original bitmap. But if you don't hold your head to close to the monitor
it shouldn't be that obvious. :D