EMAIL: frank.epple@gmx.de NAME: Frank Epple TOPIC: Imaginary Worlds COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Santa Claus palace COUNTRY: Germany WEBPAGE: RENDERER USED: PovRAY 3.1 TOOLS USED: Terrain Maker, Paint Shop Pro RENDER TIME: 1:42 HARDWARE USED: Pentium 166 Mhz, 64 MByte IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Its late february in Santa Claus palace. Its late in the evening and all lights are burning. You think Santa Claus and his staff are in holiday? Oh no, they are doing hard work for the children of this world. If they want to get ready with the work on all the toys until next christmas, they have to begin early. Very early, so they are in holiday only from 25. December until the 17. January. And so the staff is working hard on the toys for next christmas. The hole palace is made of ice and stands on top of an ice mountain. There are walls around the palace and the huts of the staff to prevent the toys against intruders who want to make the children sad and destroy the toys. But hopefully everything is working wonderful as every year... The idea for this image came from the book 'Hogfather' by Terry Pratchet. In one chapter he describes the palace of the hogfather. The hogfather is someone like santa claus. When I read this I got my idea for the imaginary worlds contest. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: The whole scene is created by hand. Only the mountain on which the castle is standing is made with Terrain Maker. First I made the walls surrounding the palace. The walls are curved to look better. The snow on the walls are blobs. Then I made the towers on the edges of the walls. The are lathe objects. The pinnacles are cutted out with boolean operations. The snow on the pinnacles are blob objects too. The huts are superellipsoids to get rounded edges. In every hut is a lightsource to get the look of busy working inside. The pinnacles on the palace are made with #while-statements. The double-spiral-stairs up the santa-tower are made with #while too.