TITLE: Fractal Head NAME: Stan Schwartz COUNTRY: United States EMAIL: stan@stanschwartzmeta-arts.com WEBPAGE: http://www.stanschwartzmeta-arts.com TOPIC: Fantasy and Mystic COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: frachead.jpg RENDERER USED: Blender TOOLS USED: Poser, CrossRoads, Python, The GIMP RENDER TIME: 10 minutes? HARDWARE USED: Compaq running Linux and Windows, Mac G4 IMAGE DESCRIPTION: I had previously written software to apply IFS and MRCM algorithms to convert 2D figurative images to fractals (viewable in the collections at the bottom of the main gallery page of my web site) and wanted to try it in 3D. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Used Poser on Mac to create meshes of two figures, 1 high-res for body, 1 low-res for head, Exported meshes in 3DStudio format. Used CrossRoads in Windows partition of Compaq to convert meshes to VRML 1 format (readable by Blender). Moved meshes to Linux partition and used my own Python implementation of the MRCM (multiple reduction copy machine) algorithm to translate, scale, and rotate vertices read in from VRML head mesh - 2 iterations of 4 3D linear affine transformations applied to all vertices = 4**2 or 16 head mesh copies, written back to file in VRML 1 format. Imported figure mesh and multiple-copy head mesh into Blender where I created the scene, did compositing, added and positioned the lights, camera, etc., and applied texture maps previously created using the GIMP. Rendered image in Blender using z-buffer, shadow buffer, and local illumination models.