TITLE: Stone Garden
NAME: Dave Merchant
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: kosh@nesys.com
WEBPAGE: www.nesys.com
TOPIC: Gardens
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: stone.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    povray 3.1a Watcom

TOOLS USED: 
    Photoshop for JPEG conversion

RENDER TIME: 
    14 hour 45 min 24 secs at AA 0.05 P200 64 mb RAM, w98
              5 hour 34 min 34 secs at AA 0.05 P400 128 mb RAM, NT

HARDWARE USED: 
    P200, 64 mb RAM, w98

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                               Gardens
A representation or interpretation of a garden, real or imaginary.
Examples could be your garden, a water garden, a window box, Kew Gardens,
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, or The Garden of Eden. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pioneer 2 Colony
August 22, 2293

A view of the Stone Garden within the Core Garden of the Pioneer 2 Colony.

Among the strangest spaces created by humans are the Core Gardens of the
big spin-gravity space colonies and trading stations, including Babylon 6,
Pioneer 1 and 2, and Elysia. All of these gardens trace their designs to
the earlier Babylon Project stations, the last of which, Babylon 5, was
abandoned nearly a decade ago, replaced by the much larger Babylon 6.

By convention, these core spaces are called gardens, regardless of size.
Although their primary purpose is to provide food and oxygen, operating
on a closed hydroponic cycle, they are normally styled to resemble an
Earth environment. The success of this design remains open to question,
as many residents find that a surface that wraps around overhead is so
disturbing that they avoid the places.

Similarly, the Core Shuttle cars are used less than might be expected,
since many people suffer nausea on the elevator ride from the 1-g surface
to the 0-g center. Conversely, the two Honeymoon Hotels in the zero-gravity 
area have long waiting lists.

This image was taken aboard Pioneer 2, the first one in which a large lake
was attempted. The design of this lake is quite complex, as it must
contain the large tidal waves generated during the weekly orbital
alignment maneuvers. In general, these design measures have been
successful, although boating is not permitted, due to the possibility of
an unscheduled maneuver.

The garden on Pioneer 2 is of a similar size and design to Babylon 5,
representing a step backward from the huge space on Pioneer 1, which had
created significant problems with internal weather, caused by rotational
coriolis forces. The interior diameter of the Pioneer 2 garden is 4000
feet, and the length is 4 miles. The exterior dimensions of this station
are 5300 feet diameter by 5 miles long, excluding the reactor boom aft
and forward docking pylons, which add another 2 miles to the length.
The station revolves at slightly less than 2 RPM, producing 1g at the
outer deck, and progressively less toward the central axis.

The station operates on a 24 hour day. Within the garden, the 24 hour
cycle is biased toward a summer mode, with 18 hours of daylight, and
very short twilight periods.

Pioneer 2 is a mining base, providing off-duty living quarters for miners
working the solar Asteroid Belt. Miners normally work 10 days on-site,
then return to the base for 10 days rest. The current population of
Pioneer 2 is 310,000 individuals, 2/3 of which are human.

The garden space includes multi-faith facilities, including this multi-use
temple and stone garden, as well as two replica New England villages,
which are kept busy with weddings and occasional funerals.

The plants are of Centauri origin, as are many of the plants used on the
station, as these are better adapted to the artificial environment.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


A stone garden within a flower garden within a hydroponic garden.

Dimensions are in English units in compliance with the conventions
established in the US version of the Babylon 5 series. Sorry to
inconvenience the majority of the world! 

This is POVRAY CSG. The plant leaves and petals were done in sPatch.
The large number of patches was too much for my computer, so I had to
trim down the plants to less than was originally planned.

The stone garden is a height field, created with POVRAY using gradients,
and onion texture for the circles. Unfortunately, after all the work of
developing it, it is a bit too far from the camera to be seen clearly.

The surfaces of the fields are image maps, scanned in from aerial photos.
(Over New England, Collins Publishers). Note that several fields have
been stripped for reconditioning, as shown by the gray tiles.

This scene started out as the Stone Garden within the Central Garden
on Babylon 5, but gradually diverged. The Babylon 5 version, as shown in
the one reference image I have, is very small, crowded into an industrial
looking hallway at the end of the garden space.

I started opening it up to show the Central Garden better, then decided
to try a curved surface lake, then added the torii and other buildings.

The big change was from the Feng Shui aspect, in changing the composition
from a very symmetrical one to the one shown here.

I only had a couple of low-res B-5 stills, but also used references from
the 1976 NASA study on space colonies, and of course Clarke's writings.

BTW, apparently the NASA study has been archived, as when I tried to get
to it, all I could find is:

http://ccf.arc.nasa.gov/dx/basket/storiesetc/spaccols.html
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/Pubs/TechReports/RNRreports/aglobus/RNR-91-018/grav.gif
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/Pubs/TechReports/RNRreports/aglobus/RNR-91-018/RNR-91-018
.html

I felt that the single central lighting rod on B-5 wouldn't work very well,
since the light would be shadowed by the Core Shuttle tracks,
so I added lighting areas on the surface, as used in the NASA study.
On mine, these are artificial light, while NASA used large windows
to admit sunlight, and proposed a concentrating mirror at the end.
Since B-5 and similar stations have over 30 deck levels surrounding the
core garden, natural light wouldn't work.

On Babylon 5, the end caps of the garden are reserved as luxury apartments,
including those for the command staff, and presumably hotels.

The reflective surface of the end cap nearly doubles rendering time,
but helps the scene. There is no end cap at the near end (behind the
camera). The infinite reflections between the two ends would have been
interesting, but would have made rendering time even worse.

The lake is a cylindrical surface outside the ground surface. The ground
is cut away with a distorted cone. Surface is chrome with ripples.
The banks of the lake are deep to contain waves produced by orbital burns.

It turned out that few 3-D surface details were required, as only the
nearest ones are visible. The village by the lake is less than half a mile
away, while the U-shaped village on the left "wall" is about 1 mile away.
Any more distant details are too small to be seen.

The pylons are nearly exact copies of the ones on B-5, with the same
variations in diameter and surface texture. This is typical sci-fi design,
with lots of unexplained details that look like they must serve some
purpose. Similarly, the Core Shuttle is a close copy of the B-5 version.
The pylons provide structural strength to the station, support the Core
Shuttle, and contain elevators to the shuttle stations.

The lighting in the garden is quite flat and shadowless, due to the large
number of lights surrounding the entire space.

I had been busy this fall, so only started working on the scene 15 days
before the deadline. I ran out of time about the same time I ran out of
computer horsepower, as I had to delete a couple of things to avoid
crashing my machine.

I never quite figured out what to do with the flat field in the left
foreground. I attempted to use the height field grass which I had
developed last year, but this crashed my machine. I was considering a US
football field, but the goal posts would have ended up directly behind the
torii, which might be a bit strange and sacreligious.
Increasing the size of the plants hid the problem.

BTW, one episode of B-5 showed a baseball field, but it appeared to not
be in the Core Garden, but in a more artificial environment.

This project raised an interesting point about Babylon 5, which was always
described as being 5 miles long. In any attempt to model it, it becomes
clear that the station must be substantially longer than that, with the
main body being at least 5 miles long by 1 mile diameter, and that the
reactor boom and docking pylons add substantially to that length.


