TITLE: Nuclear Launch
NAME: Jason Smith
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: jps6860@yahoo.com
TOPIC: Warfare
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: js_nuke.jpg
ZIPFILE: js_nuke.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    Moray 3.3

RENDER TIME: 
    1h 34m

HARDWARE USED: 
    Athlon 600 MHz

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


While I'm not a big fan of mass destruction weapons, I could resist doing a
nuclear missile launch picture.  I've always though of nuclear weapons like the
paddle of a strict parent.  ("Don't make me come up there and use this thing.")
 Its meant to be more of a threat than a tool to be used.  This becomes obvious
when weapons are given names like Peacekeeper.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


I did a lot of searching on the web to gather pictures of nuclear missiles as
reference.  I wanted to try and create a missile that looked close to one from
real life.  I eventually found a great site
(http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/icbm/lgm-118.htm) and decided to use the
Peacekeeper missile as a reference.

Due to the fact that this was not my first idea for an entry I was pressed for
time and tried to keep things as simple as possible.  (Half way through
developing my first idea I decided it wasn't working out as well as I had hoped
and switched to my alternate idea of a nuclear missile launch.)  Camera
placement and setting were the first things I worked on.  I knew I wanted an
overhead camera angle.  The focal blur and ratio came from many tinkerings. 
The 16:9 ratio helps the image seem more dramatic while the focal blur served
two purposes.  It helps draw the eye to the missile and it also helped to add
realism to the smoke cloud.  

My next focus was on the exhaust cloud that erupts out of the underground silo
on the heals of the missile.  I picked a few cloud textures out of moray and
started applying them to various primitives to see if I could come up with a
reasonable smoke cloud.  After may failed attempts I decided to give Chris
Colefax's liquid spray plugin a chance.
(http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/1434)  After playing around I was
able to come up with something that came pretty close to what I was looking
for.  The focal blur helped smooth out some of the rough spots in the smoke.

Modeling the missile came next.  I used one of the pictures as reference and
broke the missile into different columns and textured them accordingly.  The
nose was created with three cones.  The tan panels were the only real CSG that
I used this time (cubes intersected with columns slightly wider than the
missile).  I used these to create the panels that shear off the side of the
missile during launch.

The ground was last and the most simple.  I did search for an overhead picture
of a missile silo that I could use as an image map, but no such luck.  A dark
gray plane makes up the asphalt.  A lighter gray cube and cylinder group make
up the bunker that is the underground silo.  I added a few 'pipes' and 'control
boxes' to the surface of the bunker to help it not look so plain.



