TITLE: O.Z. NAME: Toby Green COUNTRY: CAN EMAIL: the_dark_allies@hotmail.com WEBPAGE: www.highpoly3d.com/writer/ TOPIC: Mythology COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: oz.jpg ZIPFILE: oz.zip RENDERER USED: 3ds Max 5.1 TOOLS USED: 3ds Max 5.1, Photoshop 7 RENDER TIME: ~25 minutes HARDWARE USED: Coolpix 2000, 1.2 Athlon IMAGE DESCRIPTION: We have all watched and read the fantasy/mythology stories about Dorthy and her travels in the land of OZ. From one generation to the next they continue to be passed down to the children, however, not many have seen the original records of what happened. As it turns out, the original scriptures indicate that Dorthy_s first two companions were the tin-man and the scarecrow, so we know that is correct. Also correct, was the fact that the tin-man had no heart (the Scarecrow had none either, nor a brain). However, the rest of the original story_s history seems to be vaguely different from that of today. It is rumored, that when the wicked witch of the West caught the two characters, they had been so badly tortured and demented, that later on they became known as _The Butchers of OZ_. Sometimes during early evenings they were seen roaming about throughout the lands causing death and destruction about. Other records, indicate the two characters remained isolated from the public, though were seen time to time by munchkins throughout the forests. There had been an arrest warrant out for the gang, after the murder of the Wizard. It is not clear exactly what happened, but recovered documents indicate that upon finding out the great Wizard had deceived them with his bag of tricks, the two could not hold back their anger and slaughtered him inside his own premises. What ever really happened in those days, we may never know. However, people will continue to debate the controversy for many more centuries, (unless I decide in the near future to render some of the historical moments ). Well for now, this image will have to do. For a long time now (over a year) I had envisioned sometime to do a scene where the tin-man and scarecrow would be next to each other, with a little bit of a dark side to them. Most everyone who has watched me build this up the past week has told me it looks quite _freaky_ so I think I_ve done that job well. To be honest, I started this project late, quite late. I was sitting here throughout my reading week holiday, and suddenly it clicked in I had some time to doodle away on this long over-due project. The current theme of the IRTC gave me just the perfect excuse to continue with this and not end up shelving it for another year :P In any case, I did learn quite a few things during this project, and it has re-sparked my interest to continue with high-poly modeling in the near future, and perhaps enter the IRTC again. I am sure I will learn quite a few more things by then. In the meantime, I hope everyone enjoys this image (minus a few nightmares). I dedicate this image to my girlfriend. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Where to start. Ok, well I started with the tin-man first of all. I worked on the hat, then remade it over, and continued with the head, slowly working more & more till he was completed. During this time, I began testing Max_s light tracer utils and I am somewhat happy they added that feature. Soon I attached an HDR image to the light for some more realistic lighting. Part of the image you see in the background is the actual HDR image which is used to light the entire environment. Once the tin-man was mostly done I started a new project and focused on just the scarecrow. Once again, I started with basically the head and then worked down from there. It is possible I could of sped up modeling on the pumpkin aspect. Instead of using any fancy modifiers etc, I just manually cut and pushed around the polys, edges, verts, and borders until I got the correct curvy shapes I wanted. Another thing I did was start hot keying certain tools I found myself repeatedly toggling such as norms subdivisions. I also found the noise modifier to be very helpful. I could of used a cloth system, but correct adjustment of nurms and noise modifiers seemed to do a well enough job for me. Texture wise, I had quite an experience. While the tin-man is mostly procedural ray-trace material, the scarecrow is a blend of some sorts. As I mentioned earlier, I had planned to do something like this scene for over a year. In fact, during September and October I went around with my digital camera and took many high quality images of straw and pumpkins in order to build a good texture set. Unfortunately, Windows XP decided to corrupt itself on me and everything was non-retrievable. I tried to improvise by manually creating textures from scratch in Photoshop but I just was not happy enough with their overall look. Luckily, I was able to get some decent textures from 3dTronic. A bit of blending in Photoshop, and soon I was somewhat happy with my replacements. Perhaps the look is not as good as I had planned, but certainly better than my initial painted trials. Later on I imported the scarecrow into my tin-man file, and tweaked them both again somewhat. I also added some blood to the tin-man_s axe, but then feared I was overdoing things, so I removed the blood and tried to tone things down a bit.