TITLE: Battle of the Elements
NAME: Scott Middleton
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: scooby@pld.com
WEBPAGE: none
TOPIC: Elements
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: sm_battl.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.1b6

TOOLS USED: 
    Poser 1.0, Moray, HF-Lab. sPatch, Chris Colefax's Spray.inc

RENDER TIME: 
    7 hours 11 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium-120


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


As soon as I saw the topic for this competition, I knew that I wanted to depict
a battle between the elemental forces.  The image came to mind of a volcano
rising out of the ocean.  This would be the battlefield, where the masculine
forces of Fire and Earth fought against the feminine forces of Air and Water. 
I knew that my ambition outpaced my skill, but I felt that with six weeks to
work on it I would be able to pull it off.  Obviously, it is still unfinished. 
I wound up with my computer down for nearly two weeks and another two weeks out
of town.  I am mostly happy with the results so far.  I do not like the water,
nor the water elemental texture.  I also needed a smoke plume, which I was
unable to get satisfactory results with.  All comments and suggestions are
welcome.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


The elementals were exported from Poser 1.0 (I know, but I haven't the funds to
upgrade).  The many sprays are from Chris Colefax's fantastic Liquid Spray .inc
file (Thanks Chris!).  The height fields were done in John Beale's HF-Lab
(Thanks John!).  The surface of the ocean and the water elemental's plume were
modelled in sPatch (a Great program!).  All the parts were put together in
Moray for Windows.  All of the textures are original; most of them were created
in Moray and tweaked by hand in POV.

Much of the development time was spent learning how to make the switch from
halos to media.  Still haven't gotten it all figured out yet.