TITLE: Voyage to Sirius
NAME: Steve Attwood
COUNTRY: UK
EMAIL: steve@g7sta.demon.co.uk
WEBPAGE: http://www.g7sta.demon.co.uk/
TOPIC: First Encounter
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: svoyager.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    PovRay 3.1a

TOOLS USED: 
    3D2POV18, Lens Flare & Galaxy 'include' files by Chris Colefax,
Cyber Sculpt 1.1 (ST), Paint Shop Pro 4.1.

RENDER TIME: 
    15min 28secs.

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 133 (64Mb), Atari 520ST (4Mb)


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    The scene depicts the Voyager 2 space probe, drifting into
Sirius - the first solar system it has encountered on it's 40,000 year journey
from Earth. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


First of all, I constructed the Voyager 2 space probe using the Cyber Sculpt
package on my Atari ST. The arms and collar (which has the gold reflective
covering on it) are extrusions. Primitives formed the basis of the other
components in the model, such as the sensors attached to the arms and the
antenna dish projections. The dish itself was 'spun' from a template detailing
one of of the edges of the dish, and then fed into the spin utility to create a
round dish shape.

The resultant .3D2 file was then exported to the PC and PovRay format smooth
triangles by use of the 3D2POV18 utility by Steve Anger.

Next I created the background to the scene, using the Galaxy include file by
Chris Colefax (http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/1434). The swirls
of purple gas were translated to get a certain desired effect - gas could be
seen from behind the planets dark side, almost as though the planet itself was
boiling. The lens flare was added (also by Chris Colefax) - type 'Rainbow' and
positioned just off the planet. 

The planets texture is using the 'agate' effect and a custom colour_map.

The next stage I added the Voyager probe and scaled it to the right size I
wanted in the scene, and rotated/translated it so that it faced the camera at
the correct angle. All parts except the Voyagers dish were added basic colours
- orange (in small quantities) to make certain parts stand out, and white/grey
for other parts. This is based upon an actual picture I have of the real
Voyager as I wanted to make it as technically accurate as possible. 

Then I created a separate PovRay scene file with only the Voyager in view, so
that I could create greyscale some dish panel detail. This was achieved by
creating a template file in Paint Shop Pro with a big 'X' in the middle of the
image. I then translated and scaled the template file image_map so that the 'X'
was in the middle of the dish. This now positioned correctly, I went back to
Paint Shop Pro and created the detail I wanted and substituted the template
file for the new image_map. A bump_map was also added to give the effect of an
irregular panelled surface.

Finally, the scene was rendered with anti-alaising set to +0.3. The result is as
you see!

