TITLE: X-mass Lights
NAME: Joe Monahan
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: jmonahan@netzone.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.netzone.com/~jmonahan/small.html
TOPIC: Lights
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: xmass.jpg
RENDERER USED: Alias Studio
TOOLS USED: Alias Studio, Photoshop to create some textures

RENDER TIME: approximately 48 hours

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
This scene was to depict the view one might expect under a christmas tree.
I tried to pay attention to the atmosphere created by the lights as well as
the lights                                                     themselves. I
thought it should look warm and fuzzy.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 
The scene was modeled, textured and rendered in Alias. Note however that
the shapes are simple - many are tapered cylinders, extruded circles or
stretched cubes. The out of focus tree branches were actually modeled but
could have been image planes, i.e textures mapped onto simple plane
geometry. The geometry could have been created with less expensive software
and  the texture maps built up in Photoshop (or some such).  If the image
has any impact at all, it would be a result of careful lighting used to
create a sense of atmosphere.
The lights themselves are just short lengths of linear lights surrounded by
relatively thick glass to provide the refraction and the depth of
transparency we see in such small lights.  Obviously the lights are more or
less out of focus, but hopefully add the warm glow that this scene called
for.