TITLE: Ice

NAME: Daniel Connelly
COUNTRY: United States

EMAIL: djconnel@flash.net
WEBPAGE: http://www.flash.net/~djconnel/

TOPIC: Great Engineering Achievements
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: djc_ice.jpg
ZIPFILE: djc_ice.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Ray Dream 5.0.2, Bryce 3D (sky only)


TOOLS USED: 
    Paint Shop Pro


RENDER TIME: 
    30 minutes


HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium II 266MHz


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

Two classical engineering subjects are the bridge and the
human-powered vehicle.  This image combines the two in a novel
way, the bridge spanning two floating ice structures, each marked
with a geometric simplicity fundamentally characteristic of
engineered, as opposed to naturally occurring, works.  How or
why this scene would occur doesn't seem terribly relevant :).


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

Extensive use was made of the free-form modeller in Ray Dream.
Most notable was the bridge, a series of 200  rectangular prisms
connected with three-twine twisted "ropes" (mostly obscured).
It was laid out flat, then globally deformed to sag.  The spikes
and looped ropes completed the structure.  The planks were textured
with the Ray Dream "wood" function.

The bike was rendered using an extruded "body" and two wheels
consisting of a rim, tire, and 3 "Spinergy"-like banded spoke
pairs.  The body was textured using reflection and color maps
generated in Paint Shop Pro.

The water was a simple infinite plane textured using one of
Ray Dream's water texture. There is room for improvement here.

The sky was quickly generated using Bryce, then included as a
backdrop and background for the final rendered image.

The ice are cube primitives to which a combination of a simple
geometric pattern from the Ray Dream CD was applied (resolution
was tripled using Paint Shop Pro).  The near ice was done a bit differently
than the far one.  The far one received an additional Ray-Dream
generated fractal pattern to the bump channel, while the color channel
received a blue-white version of the geometric pattern.  The near ice had
uniform color, but received the geometric pattern, 30x magnified, applied to
the reflection and bump channels.  It took a substantial amount of
trial and error to get these correct.

The sign was generated via a text object applied over an extruded
rectangular prism.  Both received wood texture maps to the color
and bump maps.  The color map for the letters was shaded blue.
The sign post was implemented as a cylinder textured using the
Ray Dream "rusted iron" texture.

Finally, the light was generated using the usual distant light
source.  Clearly there is room for substantial creativity here.