TITLE: Hercules and the Hydra
NAME: Lee Chapel
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: leec279241@aol.com
WEBPAGE: http://members.aol.com/leec279241/index.htm
TOPIC: Mythology
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: ljc_herc.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Vue d'Esprit 4.2

TOOLS USED: 
    Poser 5, Vue d'Esprit 4.2, Paint Shop Pro 8

RENDER TIME: 
    42 min 39 sec

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 4 2.4Ghz

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    Hercules preparing to take on his second labor, the death of
the Lernaean Hydra.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The hydra and Hercules are Poser models from DAZ 3D. The original hydra model
had only 3 heads and I needed at least nine heads. I extracted a neck and head
from the original hydra model and turned them into a separate posable figure
using Poser 5's Setup room. I then added six of these figures to bring the
total heads to the proper number, positioning each neck so that it fit into the
main hydra body in  a natural position. Each head's morphs were adjusted,
including things like how much the mouth was open, adjusting the eyes and
tongue, making the spines on each head slightly different.
For ripples in the water I placed tori around the legs of the hydra and
Hercules. The original texture for Hercules clothing had to be modified, using
Paint Shop Pro 8 to replace leopard fur with lion fur. The texture map for his
skin was also modified in PSP 8, adding some gunk from the marsh to his legs.
The mists over the marsh were created with a series of spheres with a cloud
texture applied to them. The dead trees and cattails were plants that come with
Vue d'Esprit. A series of terrains were used to create the distant edge of the
marsh, the cloud spheres adding to the distance effect.
The final picture was rendered in Vue's Ultra mode.