TITLE: RUINS ON A PARALLEL EARTH

NAME: Larry Boston

COUNTRY: United States

EMAIL: elboston@mint.net

WEBPAGE: None 

TOPIC: Ruins

COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.


JPGFILE: rope.jpg     ZIPFILE: rope.zip 

RENDERER USED: Povray for Windows. 3.1 

TOOLS USED: Paint Shop Pro 3. , MS Paint

RENDER TIME: 47 min 51 s 

HARDWARE USED: Pentium 166     32MEG RAM

	This is my first entry for the IRTC contest. I have been using POV 
for about 2 years, and since I am an organic chemist I primarily used POV
for molecules and laboratory objects. I lost interest in POV until I
I downloaded version 3.1 about 6 months ago and found it to be much more 
user friendly. I have been concentrating on the program for about 3 months.
	I used POV 3.1 only, except for using MS Paint to create the final JPEG image
and Paint Shop Pro for changing the height field image to GIF. 
I attempted to create a scene from another world, without the use of any reference 
pictures. The attempts weren't very successful, therefore I went to the 
Library and  researched ruins throughout the world and was influenced 
primarily by pictures of the ruins of Palmyra, Syria since my original
home town was Palmyra, ME. At least the project gave me an opportunity 
to read about ruins that I had never heard of before.
	The entire project took more than 50 hours,which is much more time
than I planned to dedicate to the project. Most of my objects are
made from simple shapes. I was already working on making a dodecahedron, 
therefore I decided to keep with the pentagon theme throughout the picture. 
It was difficult to get the right angles for the dodecahedron.The major
problem that I had was moving objects where I wanted them, especially 
after rotation.  
	The next scene I do should take less time because I am upgrading 
my CPU to 400 and I will learn how objects move after rotation. I also 
will probably use some of my other programs that don't require so much 
time and can create animate objects easier.
	A special thanks to the makers of the stones files and the skies 
file. I toned down the phong in the granite texture so  that the reflections
from the stadium would'nt be excessive.  I also used a multiplier in front
of the background color so that I could darken and lighten the color easily.