ACM 9001 Orbital Computer

My aim was to create an interesting & not overly obvious image 
representing a huge computer floating in orbit around what would hopefully 
look like an inhabited planet - possibly the Earth. The computer's purpose 
is intentionally unclear - it could be for defence, or some sort of big 
automated internet provider - but the most important aspect was that it 
looked big, and just a little bit threatening.

I started off (and pretty much continued) using PovRay v3 on the Falcon, 
building the lattice of tiles which would become the 'body' of the 
computer. A subtle hexagonal procedural pattern was applied using a 
diffuse metallic finish to make the object look a bit more convincing. The 
hexagonal segments differ only slightly in shade, but this is enough to 
break up the very regular surface.

To enhance the 'threat' aspect of the machine, I brought in one 
recognisable reference from outside - the staring glass eye of a well 
known computer from that very well known Sci-Fi film of mr Kubrick's. The 
proportions and detailing were kept as close to the original as possible 
so the reference could not be missed. The Atari logo was added here, as if 
to say it's the sort of thing they would have built if they had lasted 
beyond 20xx - maybe...

All of the text and logo detailing is geometric - no image maps are used. 
All the parts are 3D objects generated either by hand or with the help of 
POV3's truetype 3D font support. Geometric detail always looks better than 
bump maps because they can be viewed from any angle or distance without 
showing up any faults.

It is very difficult to indicate the scale of any object in space because 
there are relatively few points of reference, so I had to rely on 
detailing to help convey the actual size of the objects used. For this 
purpose, an astronaut was carefully reflected in the glass eye, ready to 
begin repair work on the massive structure.
This reflection was achieved by applying the astronaut's image-map to a 
huge black 'billboard' floating in space somewhere behind the viewer. The 
glass eye automatically reflects any visible object in range, due to it's 
natural reflective qualities.

More detailing was added to the object in the form of solar panels, 
egg-box style heat exchanging equipment (or whatever!) on the left, and an 
access hatch complete with hand-operated lock (top) and hatch handles 
(middle). All of these details were built from pieces of standard 3D 
shapes like cylinders, spheres and toroids. The eggbox effect was achieved 
by repeatedly subtracting small spheres from a flat surface using a 
do/while loop - a new addition to POV3 for the programming oriented user. 
I could have used a bump-map, but this approach was considerably easier to 
set up.

The planet was not part of the original plan, but came as a suggestion 
during development after some major changes to the layout had taken place. 
A gap had to be filled, and the planet was a good solution.

A large sphere was created using a custom map-like procedural texture - 
mainly shades of green, brown and blue with turbulent edges. This alone 
was not enough, and looked more like a large snooker ball with a picture 
painted on it's surface than any sort of planet. POV3's atmospheric 
effects were put to good use here - especially the 'emitting halo', which 
allowed me to add what looks like a fairly convincing atmosphere around 
the planet, complete with clouds. A second halo was added to the upper 
atmosphere, creating a dazzling glow at the edge of the object, as if 
trapping / refracting light from the sun. With these changes implemented, 
the planet started to look more convincing.

Apart from the astronaut, which was scanned in from a book, the background 
was the only other part of the image not to be generated internally by 
POV3, and is the second of only two image maps. It is actually a picture 
of the Orion Nebula, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Well, it's 
always best to use the real thing when it's available!

The scene was transported to a Pentium PC for rendering, on which it took 
around 16 hours to render at a size of 1030x1475, with adaptive 
antialiasing.