EMAIL: b.b.boelens@student.utwente.nl
NAME: Bernard Boelens
TOPIC: Science Fiction
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
RENDERER USED: POVray 3.0 (for DOS)
TOOLS USED: Adobe Photoshop (text & converting to science.jpg)
RENDER TIME: 1 hour 53 minutes 54 seconds
HARDWARE USED: Pentium-100 (16 Mb RAM)

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

After one full week brainstorming on the topic (SCIENCE FICTION)
I got a vague idea about what to create this time, a "teletime-transporter".
(A machine which can transport people in time and space.)

As a little kid, I planned my career. I wanted to become a brilliant
scientist, so I could understand all laws of physics, ready to create 
such a machine to help mankind to prevent fatal errors in history / 
present / future. Wouldn't it be great ? I don't think so. A lot of 
people would like to change the history / present in the best way 
for them selves. The majority would like to (ab)use this machine for 
errors in the past made, and not that much for travelling unlimited 
in space.
It would be better if the government controls this apparatus, 
but when I bring up the history of the atom-bomb, hmmm, maybe not...

Resuming, the teletime-transporter is still not created by me, well, not 
in reality. So, this topic was the ultimate opportunity to fullfill 
an old dream, with no harmfull effects after all.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

After joining the former contest, I started to understand how to create
a "human being". I see this "knowledge" more in the way of getting the 
opportunity to visualize my imaginary dreamworld into "semi"reality, 
called the world of POVray raytracing.
And what would make a scene more realistic ? To me, it's adding a human 
being in a scene. But, how to create a human being ? A good programmer 
can see my line/motto:  " --It's all in the world of spheres-- "
To the other people I need to say :"I'm sorry, but never ask a magician 
to reveal his tricks." You better practice a lot, and programming in 
POVray will give you a lot of excellent opportunities and understanding 
in Maths and 3D-world-raytracing.
*** Please, don't see it as a way of being arrogant, but I'm convinced 
    that practice is the best way to gain knowledge about POVray and
    to unleash your own powers. You'll see in the near future in what 
*** you're the best to create with POVray.

For the rest of the picture I can say : "add details". Oh, and the 
"beam me up"-beam was created by accident. A little hint here is that I 
stumbled into this effect while playing with a halo-effect. I got amazed
by the effect of it, so I kept it in the picture. My original plan was
to create a kind of laserbeam for the transporter, but this was even 
better/more nice. 
I used the same effect for my Turbo-YAg2X-booster (the pinky colored 
plasma-booster for the blue Oxygen-laserbeam).

Some tips I like to share with you : 
-       Glass objects
        Try to prevent glass-objects in a scene ! It'll take such a long 
        time to render. Without glass, the picture was rendered within 
        30 minutes. Glass is giving you a very nice effect in a scene, 
        but ask yourself if you really need it...
-       Torus
        A torus is sometimes hard to use on a 486-50DX machine. 
        I remember, when I added a torus in a scene, it took soooo long 
        to render. When you're not a patient person (like I'm, full of
        ideas while the rendering process is starting) forget it, unless 
        you got a fast computer, or have a huge can of coffee :)
-       Object { difference {"
        Cutting objects is (the way I experienced it) best done/understand-
        able with "object { difference"-command.
-       The manual
        Print the manual added in POVray 2.0 and use it as a great help for 
        POVray 3.0. This worked for me. For the special effects I opened 
        the POVhelp.exe program. (It was a real pain for me to notice that 
        a few newly added features were not perfectly described in it. 
        But there was also a POV3DEMO-directory which could help me out.)
-       "*.inc"-Files
        When you're creating a scene, try to split it into small projects.
        Raytracing them apart will be less timeconsuming. This makes it 
        easier to view each part of the scene. (My scene contains 8 inc-files)
        Besides, when you have some time left, after finishing the complete 
        scene, you can enhance / add more details to the objects....
        Another handy thing is, you can use those particular inc-files 
        in other scenes easily again ;>

Okay, that was all I had to say. I wish you have (had) a nice time visiting 
this POVray-site (and contest). This is the best place to see the power of
raytracing with POVray.

And, please, be so kind to vote for some artists. I think I speak for all, 
when I say "We see it as a nice opportunity to show us YOUR appreciation 
for our work/time." 
I want to emphasize that this doesn't mean you need to vote for me, just 
choose the one YOU see as the best of all. It's a little effort, and a great 
pleasure to all of us.

Thanx and greetz,

Bernard B. Boelens