I made the rectangular spiral (a stretched square) and applied an Art Brush for the depth image and it worked perfectly, sharp square corners and all.
I made the rectangular spiral for the depth image (remember white comes to the front, black to the back, and 256 shades/steps between the two) using a simple gradient fill from white to black. But I accelerated the blend with a Profile setting so that the decent would start slow and accelerate as it gets closer to the bottom.
To the left of the gradient fill is a small white rectangle with a tiny horizontal line top and bottom that was used to create the spiral outline overlay.
Then of course the magical transition of the stars and hieroglyphics was done with a gradient repeating fill. Gene Levine uses Photoshop for assembly for stuff like this and it amuses me how easy it is to do in Xara and what a chore it would be to create in Photoshop.
