August 1995 competition entry: tori.jpg

included in this file are

README -this file

gate.pov - the file containing the vast majority of the scene
amgate.pov - gate.pov with increased ambient lighting on the gate, not used in
             my entry, but it produces a kinda neat effect
illgate.pov- the illuminated portion of the gate
gate_bg.pov- the background which is seen through the gate
tori.inc -   the tori gate thing 
illgate.inc- a chunk of the illgate.pov code which i stuck in an include file
             so that it would be easier to change illgate.pov in case of a 
             major change.
times.txt -  the trace times of each image (each image was traced on either an
             HP715/75 or HP715/80)

the way the file was constructed:

first the files were traced producing:
gate.tga
illgate.tga
gate_bg.tga

then i used a nifty little utility i wrote to combine parts of the images
(this should be possible with DTA using the "chromakey" feature),
i told my utility that all black areas on illgate.tga were transparent and 
should be replaced with gate.tga, then i told it that all blue (0 0 255) 
regions were transparent and should be replaced by gate_bg.tga.

other than that:
the height field was created using xfractint (a generic plasma with a big 
rectangle cut out of the center, compliments of xv), the background is a shot
from the hubble telescope that i found in 
http://www.univ-rennes1.fr/ASTRO/astro.english.html

i think it's a picture of the orion nebula, but i'm not too sure...

hmm... other than that the only thing i can think of is that there's a small
problem with the shadows cast by the cloud cylinder in front of the gate (they
should be grey as opposed to black) perhaps one day i'll go back and fix 
that (i would do it right now, but i'm kinda out of time)

oh... and the image was gamma corrected using xv3.1 (i used a value of 1.4)

BIO:
(i know, you don't care, but please, let my ego have it's moment)

i'm a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  I'm a 
sophmore in computer science (ie i know just enough to be dangerous... mainly
to myself tho... ;) ).  my main interest is in computer graphics, and 
my web page is at http://eta.cs.wisc.edu/~depe

PS i know my web page sucks pretty hard, so please don't remind me...

