EMAIL: codegrynder@yahoo.com
NAME: Bill Bobzien
TOPIC: Ruins
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Nickel Tour
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/codegrynder
RENDERER USED: Bryce 4
TOOLS USED: Poser 4, Paint Shop Pro 5
RENDER TIME: 1 hour 1 minute
HARDWARE USED: P166, 96 Mb RAM
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

Natsuko Yoshimitsu, a researcher at Site 3 on Russell's Stake, points 
out some key features of the mysterious ruins, abandoned long ago by 
an unknown race, to a newly-arrived colleague, Carson Dako.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

The ruins and the hill they surround are all terrain objects with
various materials applied. The research station structures and the
cargo lighter are Boolean (CSG) objects, while the cargo itself
is a group of cube objects. The roadway is a cube with stone and terrain
objects differenced out of it. The figures are from Poser; Carson's
data tablet is a cube with an image map applied for the
transparency setting. (The figures are named for the Poser characters
on which they are based, with last names taken from some novels I read
recently.)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Thanks to Lester, whose "rusted decay" Deep Texture Editor tutorial
(http://www.deeptextures.demon.co.uk) provided the starting-off
point for the ruins textures, and to Peter Sharpe, whose tutorials
were also a big help (especially the "broken glass" technique, which
I adapted for the roadway.) Thanks to the IRTC Admins for running 
this great contest, and to my fellow raytracers, for constantly
challenging me to do better. Thanks also to my parents (love the 
software, guys!) and, last but by all means not least, to my wife, 
Julie, for putting up with this strange obsession I picked up long
ago with an idle visit to povray.org.