TITLE: Battle NAME: Michael L. Marine COUNTRY: USA EMAIL: marine@ctc.com WEBPAGE: None TOPIC: Magic COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: mlmmagic.jpg RENDERER USED: 3D Studio MAX TOOLS USED: Blur Fire, BonesPro, Character Studio, Combustion, Digital Forest, LenFX, Lightning, MAX:Surfaces, MetaReyes Metaballs, Particles+, Particle Combustion, RealLensFlare and SuperGlow 3DS Plugins; and Photoshop 4.0 RENDER TIME: Approximately 1 hour 40 minutes HARDWARE USED: Pentium Pro 200 w/ 96MB RAM IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The image depicts a battle between an evil wizard and his troll guards against a sorceress and her dragon trying to save her friend from being used as a sacrifice. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: The final image was rendered as a 32 bit Targa image at 800 x 600 resolution then converted to a JPEG format with Photoshop. To storyboard, model, texture, layout and light this scene took approximately 35 days to create at 4-6 hours a day including all test renderings. The final file size of the scene is 52MB. The ground plane is a quad patch with a fractal noise modifier added. This was then texture mapped with an image of Venus for the diffuse and a gray scale of the image for bump. These maps were then added to a blend material that used the original maps as the base and a fractal noise map as a bump. The Keep is a tube that has been booleaned for the crenellations, window openings and doorway. The creature heads on the Keep are from a model created by Robert K. Sharo, and is freely available at the 3D Caf_ website (http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/default.asp) and the Creator Studio website (http://www.mediom.qc.ca/creator-studio/home.html). The texture mapping for the Keep is a multi-sub material with a rock pattern as the diffuse and bump material base with numerous sub materials for coloring and fractal noise procedurals used to eliminate any noticeable repeating of the base materials tiling pattern. Additionally, a volumetric light is used to illuminate the inside. The tree was created with the freeware Digital Forest plugin available at the 3D Caf_ and textured with a wood grain procedural diffuse material and a bark image bump map. The Wizard was a free model of the month from Viewpoint Datalabs (http://www.datalabs.com/indexb.html). All the original textures that were applied to the model were used. The model was tessellated and had new smoothing groups applied then re-posed. The Sorceress is from the "Model Woman" collection and purchased from the Zygote Media Group (http://www.zygote.com) with the gloves and boots from the female Superhero in the "Living People" collection purchased from Digimation (http://www.digimation.com) and created by Imagination Works. She is textured with a multi-sub material consisting of various diffuse, bump and reflection/refraction maps. The model was posed using the Character Studio modules biped and physic. The Troll is from Viewpoint Datalabs and comes with the Character Studio plugin for 3D Studio MAX. He is textured with a multi-sub material consisting of various diffuse, bump and reflection/refraction maps. The model was posed using the Character Studio modules biped and physic. His club is a sphere scaled along the xy axis with a fractal noise modifier added and textured with a wood image diffuse map and a bark image bump map. The girl prisoner crucified to the tree was purchased from Gary Oliverio who created the model in Animation Master and 3D Studio R4. The textures are the original ones that came with the model. Although the mesh is extremely detailed in all other areas the feet were very simple elongated cone shapes. I replaced these with a copy of the feet from the original sorceress mesh. The model was posed using the BonesPro skeletal deformation plugin from Digimation. I created the Dragon (my first attempt at creating an organic model) using the MetaReyes Metaballs plugin for 3D Studio MAX and MAX's default modeling tools. The base for the model consists of a single skin mesh created from over three hundred "Meta Muscles" and metaballs. The small face size setting required to achieve the level of detail I wanted in the model produced an extremely dense mesh which then had an optimize modifier applied to it to lower the poly count. The nose horns, eyes, teeth, collar and chain are modified standard primitives. The neck frill is a modified star spline extruded with a level 3 mesh smooth modifier, two bend modifiers, a ripple modifier and a noise modifier applied. The mesh is textured with a multi-sub material consisting of numerous diffuse and bump maps. The model was posed using the BonesPro skeletal deformation plugin. This model took me about two weeks to model and texture. If you have been daunted by creating organic models (like I have always been) metaballs is an intuitive and reasonably easy way to accomplish the task. Also available is MetaMAX by Sandeep Shekar, a freeware metaballs plugin for 3D Studio MAX that can be downloaded from the 3D Caf_. The background for the image is a simple gradient environment map using the Inshani Graphics MAX:Surfaces Stratus procedural map in the top gradient layer. Additional clouds were created over the wizard to add depth to the background using the standard Combustion plugin. The sorceress's fireballs were created using Blur Fire (free from Blur Studios, their modified version of the standard combustion plugin), particles+ and particle combustion (both free from Peter Watje of Spectral Imaging). The particle system also has a Cebas Computer's RealLensFlare video post (available at http://www.trinity3d.com) glow filter applied. The wizard's aura is a LenzFX glow video post filter and his lightning storm shield spell consists of three lightning helpers applied to three dummy objects the hood of his cape and a helix spline around his body. The lightning then has an object channel set with a Super Glow (free from 3D Caf_ and other sources) video post filter applied to that object channel. The radiant star/sun is a LenzFX video post filter with no lens reflections set and only glow and ray settings. The main lighting for the scene consists of a directional light with overshoot set to simulate the ambient light from the sun and uses ray traced shadows (not shadow maps). In conjunction a target spot, aligned with the directional light, is used that has its fall off set to the same area size as the ground plane using ray traced shadows and excluding the ground plane surface from illumination. Target spots are also set behind the Keep, troll and tree to enhance the definition of the shadows cast by those objects. These three spots exclude all objects from illumination and only cast shadows. Additionally, seven omni lights set to various colors are used to add accents in the scene such as the yellow highlights on the Dragon's head from the sorceress's fireball. Adobe Photoshop 4.0 was used to add my name and date to the image and convert it to a JPEG format.