TITLE: Repair Hanger
NAME: Perry Kroll
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: mr.kroll@verizon.net
WEBPAGE: www.beantowntechies.com
TOPIC: Old Technology
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: hangerpk.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Carrara Studio 2.1 Hybrid Raytracer

TOOLS USED: 

- Carrara Studio 2 (for modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering)
- Photoshop 4 (for image maps)
- Illustrator 7 (for spline extrusion EPS shapes)

RENDER TIME: 
    22 minutes, 56.95 seconds

HARDWARE USED: 
    Apple Desktop G4 867mhz, 256mb, 80gb


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


The image depicts a 1920's era aircraft repair hanger with WWI biplanes housed
in it. One is suspended in a sling to provide the mechanics easy access to all
areas. 

The biplanes are the most obvious link to the "Old technology" theme, although
the technology level in the hanger is clearly not up to current aircraft
maintenance standards either.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


I first modeled the plane, using diagrams of the Fairy Swordfish (a well known,
though somewhat clumsy WWI fighter). The main body, as well as the wings, tail,
and propeller were created with skinned spline extrusions. The tires and nose
cone were lathe objects. For the surface map I started with a photograph of a
boat floor (by Alexei Nabarro, from:
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=72012), it was not taken
straight-on so I corrected the perspective in Photoshop, then I painted in the
variations, burn marks, decals, etc. I used a levels-adjusted, grayscale copy
as the bump channel and duplicated the color channel for the highlight map
(this, I have found gives a nice, metallic look). For the hanger I created
modular pieces (doors, walls, stairways, support beams, walkways, etc.) and
then assembled them together. The lighting consists of: a faint bluish point
light for ambiance, several faint blue cones to bring out the details, and the
primary soft-shadowed, yellowish, point lights to simulate electrical lighting.
All the textures in the hanger were made by merging conventional image maps
(scanned, or home made, etc.) with Carrara's excellent Procedural Shaders to
create a random dirty look in the surface. 

I highly recommend Carrara; it is a terrific application, and it handles
modeling, texturing, assembling and rendering quickly and almost perfectly. It
does, however, have some rather irritating tendencies. For example, when
working on a large file (400k>) saving from the "save changes?" dialog will
corrupt the scene file; you must always save with the menu command.

Note: I did not provide source files because it all topped in at over 250 mb and
it seemed a bit unlikely that anyone would want to download all that!

-- Perry Kroll, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA