TITLE: Engineering Olympic Style
NAME: Teddy Nishiyama
COUNTRY: Japan
EMAIL: tnishi@ari.ncl.omron.co.jp
TOPIC: Great Engineering Achievments
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: slpskate.jpg
ZIPFILE: slpskate.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.0 for Windows

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray, NKflare.inc

RENDER TIME: 
    ...I forgot to check but I think it was about 2 hours.

HARDWARE USED: 
    486-100MHz

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

           As you all know, the 18th Winter Olympics were held this 
        year in Nagano, Japan and one of the events that stood out
        was the Speed Skating competitions held at the M-Wave ice
        rink.  This was the first Olympiad where skaters used the
        new "slap-skates" (or "clap-skates"), where the back part
        of the skate separates from the heel of the boot and then
        slaps back into place as the skater pushes off the ice.
           This new skate is apparently less stable than the older
        skates and seems to take a bit of getting used to, but when
        used correctly, it helps the skater transfer more power into
        their stride as they push off the ice.  The separating heel
        allows the full blade to stay in contact with the ice to get
        maximum power, where as with the older skates, skaters would
        end up pushing against the ice with the front edge of the
        skate at the end of their stride.
           Though slightly overshadowed by the even newer strips of
        ...what is it?...plastic? or something, on the head and on the
        calves of the Norwegian skaters, the slap-skates seem to have
        contributed to many of the gold medals which were won with
        record breaking times.  Most were won with either Olympic or 
        World records.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

           The hardest part of this topic was actually coming up with
        an idea to work with.  Well, the Olympics happened to be
        right there, as were the slap-skates.
           The olympic rings, the blade of the skate and the medal
        was pretty straight forward, but the boot of the skate was
        a problem.  I couldn't think of a good way to create it and
        I'd heard of Rhino and thought that's probably what I needed
        but since I don't have it, I decided to give a bezier patch
        a try.  After several tries, I finally got a shape that 
        looked pretty much like the boot portion.  The "ice" is also
        quite straight forward...it's just a thinned out cube with
        a dented white texture.
           After asking my wife for her opinion, she said I should
        add a ribbon to the medal...ugh...after the boot, I decided
        I hate working with bezier patches, but again, I resorted 
        to using another patch for the ribbon.
           Finally, I added Nathon Koop's nkflare.inc file for the
        sparkle.

