TITLE: Sunken Treasure
NAME: Stephen Lumini
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: steve@neurotrain.com
WEBPAGE: members.xoom.com/slumini
TOPIC: Sea
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: sunken.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    3DS Max 3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    Paint Shop Pro,

RENDER TIME: 
    2h 54 m

HARDWARE USED: 
    PII 400 128 Ram


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

The marvelous sword of Antonio Piero Lumini di Florenzia lay ruined on the sea
floor.  Little good it had done him when, two days out of port, the Santa
Teresa Isabella ran afoul of the worst storm ever seen by her crew.  Sharp
steel did little to Wind and Waves.  The menacing winds had torn through the
little ship, ripping the sails, destroying the masts, before throwing the crew
around as though they were rag dolls.  Violent towers of green blue had grown
to dwarf the rigging and then crash heavily onto the deck of the ship, time and
again.  The pounding cracked the ship like an egg, spilling its contents into
the sea.  Now, many years later, the calm of their restng place belies the
violent manner in which the sailors and their cargo arrived.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

First off, a special thanks to Greg, Hedde, and Les.  Part of the way this image
was created involved having these friends critique it.  Undoubtedly, this image
was improved because of their helpful comments.
        The three different type of fish are all an exercise in Image Map
modeling (meaning simply that I found a good picture and made the model match
as close as possible).  
        The skulls are borrowed from 3dCafe and given a home-made "dirt"
texture.
        The same bumpmap texture was used on the sword which is made up of
simple objects.
        The pistol is also borrowed form 3dCafe and has the same texture as the
trunk.
        The coral-like yellow-brown and white-brown objects are just stretched
spheres with a type of 3ds texture called cellular.
        The sponge like objects have the same texture as the coral-like ones
with different settings and colours.
        The rocks are a bunch of stretched spheres with a dirt bumpmap and
image.
        The sea-grass is just a bunch of thin objects with a space warp causing
the waviness.
        The sea flowers are made from one cone with a bend modifier and a rotate
array.
        The tubes coral are just that - bent tubes.
        The coins are squished spheres with a bump map of a intricate design.  I
made the design circular and vague so that they would look old.
        The sharks were adapted from a tiger shark model I made years ago in
sPatch.  I stretched out the eyes and it made a decent hammerhead.
        The trunk was the last thing I made and the most complex as it is
planned as the focus of the picture.  The planks of the body are actually
individual objects which were then grouped together and textured.  The texture
is made from a three layered image I made (a photo of wood, rust and noise all
combined (obviously the rust was recoloured green)).  I then cut out a hole and
put the coins in.  I had to create a box and texture it flat black to help
outline the "hole" because the coins and ocean floor were to similar in colour
to the trunk.  The edges are boxes and spheres once again grouped and textured.
 The clasps are simple outlines made with the line tool and extruded (easily
done in sPatch).  The padlock is three pieces - the torus, the shield shaped
body and the keyhole engraving.  Again a black box was used, put inside the
keyhole to accentuate the outline.

The lighting involves 4 lights.  One to make the glowing corner, another to
light the scene from that direction, a third to make the coins glitter the way
I wanted, and the last to light the camera's viewpoint.

Any questions, just e-mail me at steve@neurotrain.com