TITLE: "Imitation is the most sincere..." NAME: Greg M. Johnson COUNTRY: USA EMAIL: gregj56590@aol.com WEBPAGE: http://members.xoom.com/gregjohn/ TOPIC: Still Images COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: flatter.jpg ZIPFILE: flatter.zip RENDERER USED: Corel Dream3D 7 TOOLS USED: Corel PhotoPaint 7 to create gel maps for caustics, to add copyright. RENDER TIME: Four minutes, 53 seconds! HARDWARE USED: Aptiva w/ Pentium 200 IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: I created the dolphins in Corel Dream3D using the FreeForm tool. I studied dolphin shapes and sizes from several photographs to decide what height and width each of my cross sections should be. I used the paint tool in Dream3D to make the creatures darker on the top than on the bottom. I then let this project sit for about two years. About to move into a new house, and having just poured manmonths of effort into the IRTC Animation contest, I wanted a quick entry in tune with the spirit of "Water." So I took one of my dolphins and turned it into a submarine! The water is a bit boring, being all one color. Ideally, it should be darker at the lower depths. But when one uses the fog settings in CorelDream 3D, that's what you are stuck with. I was considering writing my own rendering program to call Dream3D several times, and average the bitmaps together. But I thought that this would be a violation of the spirit of the rules of the IRTC.;-) In any case, this is sort of my farewell to Dream3D. I am quite tired of making tens of thousands of mouseclicks to make an image. My index finger ached last night.