TITLE: The Destroyer
NAME: Mick McMullin
COUNTRY: Ireland
EMAIL: mickmcm@indigo.ie
TOPIC: Flight
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: destroy.jpg
ZIPFILE: destroy.zip
RENDERER USED: povray 3.00e for Windows
TOOLS USED: Texture Magic, Paint Shop Pro (for titles and JPEG conversion)
RENDER TIME: 1h 12m 18s
HARDWARE USED: Pentium 90
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
        Some Robot biker dude who's making good use of the new laser canon
        on his flying bike.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 
        I created this image without any external modellers, just entering
        text into the editor. However, I created new textures a few days
        ago with Texture Magic and substituted them in. I'll definitely be
        registering this program and I'd recommend it to anyone.

        The sky is a textured sphere which wasn't looking right until I
        moved the subject matter nearer the top rather than in the center.
        It's obvious when you think about it - there's more atmosphere
        between you and the horizon than there is above your head. I'd
        like to say that I came up with such a simple but effective
        trick, but I'd be lying of course - I got it from a posting
        in the raytracing newsgroup made by Nick Stevens. The ground
        was simply a smaller sphere sharing the same centre point as
        the sky. The clouds above the ground were a little tricky to
        get right; transparent textures on spheres just didn't seem
        to work. In the end I used POV's halo function which I scaled
        appropriately.

        The flying bike was the easiest bit as it was very much
        improvised. To add detail, I simply repeated a few basic elements
        but scaled them differently and unevenly. The robot figure wasn't
        too difficult either. I had created a figure template for my
        other entry, Angel, so I just used different values and added a
        bit more detail.

        Source code is included - feel free to use & enjoy!

        Mick.
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