TITLE: Atlantis Gateway
NAME: Chris Betts
COUNTRY: Australia
EMAIL: cbetts@cs.monash.edu.au
WEBPAGE: http://www.cs.monash.edu.au/~cbetts
TOPIC: Imaginary Worlds
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: cbgate.jpg
ZIPFILE: cbgate.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    povray 3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    none

RENDER TIME: 
    40 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    pentium 233

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

Past the Gates of Hercules, in a particularly obscure part of the
Atlantic, the ancient and enchanted gateway of Atlantis occasionally
rises from the deep (but only when the stars are right... :-) ).  It leads
to numerous alien and improbably worlds, where the ancient Atlantians
built strange and wonderful temples (now sadly in disrepair) to their 
patron deity, Poseidon.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

Contrary to appearence, this is *not* a cut-and-past job between
two images!  The portal arch obscures the edges of a hole in the
inner sky-sphere (actually a sky-plate in this image) which reveals
the outer objects (planets and the star sphere), and a protective
(starfield textured) conical cover stretches between the arch and the
sky-plate hole, to make the reflection in the water look right.

The objects are all CSG (see attached include file).  The "seaweed"
is two layered green marble with transparent regions.  The giant-planet
atmosphere is similar.  (Mmm... not sure about the purple clouds...)
The rings are a wood texture with no randomness and transparent regions.

The greek columns are a bit of a cliche' I guess,  but I *like* 
greek columns!  Anyway, they're done as segments approximating the
real thing, which I hope makes them less objectionable :-)

... So there you go. Hope you like it; I've been lurking on this web
site for a while now, and finally got it together enough to have a 
shot at contributing!

    All the best,

        Chris Betts

