I was re-reading _Rendezvous With Rama_ and thought I'd render it, to 
get a feel for the size of the thing.  It's Big.

(For those who haven't read it - it's a hollow, cylindrical cylinder 
with an interior 50 km long, and an internal diameter of 16 km.  It 
rotates to generate artificial gravity against the inner surface.)

At the airlock end, there are three stairways that go from the base of a 
km long ladder and follow a mostly hemispherical slope to the flat part 
of the cylinder.

I got the end's shape - there are six platforms that cicle the 
hemispherical slope - and ran a trace() to place steps made of boxes. 
It generated over 10,000 steps.  The parse went fairly quickly.  Then 
the render started.

I'm doing this on a Windows 98 system with an Athelon 2200 (which is 
equivalent of a 1.2G pentium).  It was rendering 130 pixels per _minute_.

Needless to say, I pulled the stairway.

Anyone have a suggestion for a quicker render?

Tom A.

(If you haven't read it, I suggest _Rendezvous with Rama_ by A. C. Clarke.)

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