TITLE: Hoop
NAME: Marcus Lundberg
EMAIL: melundbe@mtu.edu
TOPIC: Epic Proportions
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: hoop.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.5

TOOLS USED: 
    Photoshop 5.5 & 7, Moray

RENDER TIME: 
    ~12 hours

HARDWARE USED: 
    AMD Athlon 1.52 GHz

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

Look closely.  A robot in a run-down alley is playing some strange hoops.  The
Hoop is home to a fantasy castle and flocks of sheep, along with lakes and
forests.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

When I set out to create this image, I was struck with two ideas: 1) I've never
made a robot in POV-Ray, and I must remedy that, and 2) I've made this toroidal
planet thing, I wonder if I can use it. Those two ideas, more than anything
else, drove this thing along. 
Some details for those who are interested:
-The Hoop is a toroidal isosurface with a Perlin noise added to it to create
mountains and things.  It's one of my favorite creations.  Imagine life on such
a thing (where would the sun go???).
-I downloaded the castle from Renderocity or something ages ago.
-The trees are reused from an old picture. They're just randomized blobs on
cones.
-The robot was created by CSG. Some parts constructed in Moray and included.
-I used a Moray plug-in called CityBuilder to create the background city.
-The rain was tricky to get right. They're elongated spheresweeps.
-The basketball/sun is a pile of (semi)transparent spheres with media. A couple
of solar flares courtesy of cones with media.

It's a pity I have to submit this early, but I'm going on a trip.  It'd be great
to have been able to polish this more. Composition was tricky, with the
extremely tiny but important things on the hoop.

Have a good summer!

