TITLE: Seth's Playground
NAME: James Moore
COUNTRY: US
EMAIL: jtm11@bellsouth.net
TOPIC: Spectacular Landscapes
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
RENDERER USED: Povray 3.5
TOOLS USED: Povray, Gimp for jpg conversion
RENDER TIME: around 24hrs
HARDWARE USED: Athlon MP 1.4GHz, 256MB Ram
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
On the newly discovered world of Seth, named after the ancient Egyptian god of the desert and chaos, a scattered group of large, living crystals, commonly known as suncatchers, reflect the early morning sunlight as a dust storm gathers strength in the distance.
DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
A simple image made entirely in povray mainly to see if I could actually do it without using other tools.  The sand and mountains are heightfields with leopard and wrinkle patterns.  The crystals are simple csg objects with a glass texture and a slight emitting media for brightness and are there just to break up the monotony of the sand.  The sky is a scattering media in front of a skysphere backplane for brightness.  The sun is a sphere with emitting media.  The clouds are made from a large sphere with a media density fading from 0 at the center to a wrinkle pattern at the edges.  The dust is a box with a scattering media.  It was originally supposed to be light dust blowing off the ground, but I accidentally got the density pattern upside down.  After rendering it, I decided I liked the way it made the horizon darker, so I left it that way.  I'm not quite happy with the way the mountains turned out, but converting them to isosurfaces made the render times even longer.  I know render time for all the media objects really adds up, but I really like the feel I think they add to the image.

As always, any comments or advice is greatly appreciated.