TITLE: The lab pilot
NAME: Pierre Huber
COUNTRY: FRANCE
EMAIL: pierre_huber@hotmail.com
WEBPAGE: www.citeweb.net/quickblend/
TOPIC: The lab
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: labpilot.jpg
ZIPFILE: labpilot.zip
RENDERER USED: 

    Blender 2.04


TOOLS USED: 

    Blender 2.04, iPhoto Plus 4


RENDER TIME: 

    1 min. 29 sec.


HARDWARE USED: 

    PII 233 Mhz 64RAM (modeling)
    PIII 800 Mhz 256RAM (rendering)


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


This picture represents a small lab pilot used for process research in inorganic
chemistry. Since it is well inspired on an existing one, I cannot tell you much
more about it.
I worked in a lab like this one for a while. I had a lot of fun using this
equipment. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


I started to build a glass reactor and its inner metal frame using Blender
classical mesh editing tools. I knew that Blender was not good at simulating
glass. The metal frame makes the viewer focus on the inside of the reactor so
he does not look too much at the envelope imperfection. 
As this first shot was not so bad, I added the other devices progressively:
overhead stirrer, peristaltic pump, magnetic stirrer, gas pump... 
When I started to use Blender, I was trying to figure out how to make complex
shape without having real Boolean tools. Well, Blender as a different
philosophy, and at last I have been able to make these devices entirely with
Blender.
There are a lot of tubes and cables in the picture, those are bezier circle
going through 3D paths (very easy to handle, fast to render). Textures for the
ground, the wall and the lab tiling are made with digital pictures taken in my
kitchen (I couldn't bring my camera in the lab). Other textures like LCD
screens are made with iPhoto Plus4 drawing tools. The poster on the left of the
wall is just a Blender screenshot.
I used the radiosity feature in order to have an idea of the correct lighting,
then I turned it off and tried to mimic this lighting with a spot and a few
regular lamps. Radiosity cannot be used for final rendering since it does not
work with textures and glass objects.
I rendered this file with Blender whole new "unified renderer". This new
renderer improves the aspect of glass/solid intersection, and allows halo
lighting with scenes containing transparent objects. 
So far, Blender can only mimic ray tracing. But I think that its fast rendering
engine is a good alternative to ray tracing for complex scenes and animations. 


The zip file does not contain the whole lab (sorry, it was too big) but just a
few devices.