If you have been following the groups here long enough, you might 
remember seeing some early versions of this image. Real life got in the 
way, and I didn't get to play with it for over a year. (I was able to 
relocate this thread here, if anyone's interested: 
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3Cweb.43e92d74109374333ef5a7570%40news.povray.org%3E/?ttop=242868&toff=850

)

It feels good to be working on it again. :-) It has suffered a little 
bit from code rot, which basically means that little gremlins sneak in 
and replace the simple, elegant code that you remember with ugly, 
complicated code that you don't. And they delete all the comments that 
you remember adding.

Most of the changes since I started working on it again a few weeks ago 
are fairly small; a texture here, a finish there, and so on. Probably 
the most obvious change is with the bugs. I've been trying to make it 
more obvious that they're insects and not birds or something (a friend 
of mine thought they were supposed to be satellites...), and I've got 
them following a spline now, which is definitely an improvement. I keep 
changing my mind on how big they should be and how many of them there 
should be, but I think I'm happy with where they are now.

Right now, I'm playing with the cupola, particularly the curtains (BTW, 
anybody happen to have any really good curtain photo references handy?). 
I'm probably going to wind up ripping it out and coding it again. :-)

I could use ideas for the "wood" texture. I'm not really sure what I 
actually want it to look like, really. Something that evokes the idea of 
wood, but still has an alien feel to it. I'm open to ideas.

And, now that I've mentioned it in Bill Pragnell's CGSphere image, yes, 
the sand is pretty bland. :-P I haven't touched it in a year. (If you 
look *really* *really* close, you might see my attempt at having sand 
grains be visible in the foreground.) It would probably help to have 
some ripples/wind effects (Google images pulled up this: 
http://photo.net/photo/pcd0738/great-sand-dune-hills-light-15.4.jpg )

Anyway, I'd love to hear thoughts from you guys. :-) It's been one heck 
of a trip so far.

-- 
William Tracy
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You know you've been raytracing too long when you've tried to scan your 
face for a texture.
Quietly Watching

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