TITLE: Globus
NAME: Klaus Elend
COUNTRY: Germany
EMAIL: klaus.elend@ib-mohnen.de
TOPIC: The Laboratory
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: globus.jpg
ZIPFILE: globus.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1g

TOOLS USED: 
    The GIMP for image map modification and final JPEG conversion

RENDER TIME: 
    33 min

HARDWARE USED: 
    666MHz Pentium III

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


We all *are* in a big laboratory - we just did not realize it.
Not yet, that is ...


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


   The idea for this image was more or less by accident: I was playing
around with that globe when I had the idea about mixing up the globe
with the earth by combining small scale elements like the table and
the book with large scale ones like stars and the moon.  Only then I
realized that such an image would fit the current competition topic,
so I decided to participate if I could manage to finish the image in
time.

   The moon is a sphere with an image map using real moon photos taken
from http://www.nrl.navy.mil/clementine/clib/.  The image you can get
there is larger than the moon and must be cropped.  (BTW: by manually
editing the url you can get much larger images than the 768x768 the
user interface allows, but this of course was not needed for this
image)

   The earth also is a sphere with an image map, but it additionally
has a bump map applied.  The map images can be downloaded from
http://www.jht.cjb.net/, they do not need any modification.  The
clouds are not part of the image map, they are POV-Ray textures.  I
used a large scale granite pattern to define the areas where clouds
should be, the clouds themselves are again a granite pattern, but
scaled much smaller.  The two patterns are combined using a texture
map.

   The enterprise starship model was made by Ville Saari, it is
available for download at http://povobjects.keyspace.de.

   I made the image on the book using The GIMP, by combining the two
images at http://vraptor.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/images/saturn.gif and
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planetary/saturn/saturn_family.jpg.
The background is created using Chris Colefax famous galaxy include
file.  The rest of the image is constructed using simple CSG, no
modeller was used.

   Due to space requirements the earth maps, the enterprise starship
model and the galaxy include file are not included in the source.  If
you have trouble downloading them, mail me and I will send them to
you.

   Finally I would like to thank my girlfriend Mona for her advice and
patience, without her this image would not have been possible.

