I spent a tremendous amount of time on my entry for the Frozen Moment
round. Like you, I'm still learning POV-Ray (over a year now!), and I
used my entry to learn isosurfaces and radiosity. Not a speedy combination,
especially when I added some transparency! Hopefully as we produce more
work we'll develop speedy techniques and tricks, and build a set of files
we can re-use.

Along those lines, one of the best aspects of the IRTC is the source files.
I was sure to include mine, and I'd like to thank all those who included
theirs over the years. There's no point to everyone re-inventing the wheel
every time they want to produce an image; and even if it's just a technique
or method the source code provides a wonderful resource. The POV Objects
Collection at www.povworld.de/objects is also a great resource.

Of course, even if you have a good library of objects you still have to
use inspiration and hard work to put them together in an artistic way. I've
seen too many images (a lot of them at renderosity.com) where people just
take a few objects and throw them together to produce an image. I'm not
saying good art can't be created that way, it just usually isn't.

I sometimes wonder if using Maya or another pricey tool would speed the
work, but I'm not sure. Probably for animation. I'm very happy with the
quality of output from POV-Ray but I think you could get good results
from any package available today if you pour enough time into it.

I couldn't keep up the pace I set for my IRTC entry for very long and remain
healthy and sane...and employed, so I won't be entering very often.

Good luck with your entry!

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