EMAIL: east103@dialaccess.com NAME: Phillip L. Easton TOPIC: First Encounter COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Close Encounters of the Santa Kind COUNTRY: USA WEBPAGE: http://www.dialaccess.com/east103/ RENDERER USED: Bryce 3.1 TOOLS USED: sPatch, Poser 2, Paint Shop Pro 5.1 RENDER TIME: 13 hrs. 18 min. HARDWARE USED: AMD K6 300/75 MHz with 64 MB and Windows 98. IMAGE DESCRIPTION: He is known by many names, such as Santa Claus, Sinter Klaas, St. Nicholas, and Pere Noel. There are many of us who once believed in Santa Claus and would awake on Christmas morning with great anticipation as to what he might have brought us. However, did you ever wonder what it would be like if you woke up and found Santa Claus in your house? DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: I download sPatch just before starting this image and I am glad that I did! The boots, stockings, fireplace scoop, ribbons, bows, and boots were all made with sPatch. These were then imported into Bryce 3.1 a DXF files. The textures on the stockings and clock face were created using Paint Shop Pro 5.1. The remaining textures were generated using Bryce. The tree is a Bryce 3.1 object. The lights, decorations, and ribbon were each place manually around the tree. The gifts are boxes and cylinders mated with the bows created in sPatch. The fire place stones were created by taking an image and using it to created a terrain or heightfield. The snow covered hills are also terrains. The icicles are symmetrical lattices with a glass texture applied. Santa's legs and fur are also symmetrical lattices. The rug is made of 4 toruses. A bump texture was applied using cylinder mapping to create the rug texture. The rest of the objects such as the fireplace tools, mantel, mantel clock, and candlesticks were created using Boolean operations. The walls, ceilings, and floor are just block primitives stretched. A white bump texture was applied to these surfaces. Using a negative Boolean operation created the window. The window structure was created using boxes stretched to fit. Another box was inserted into the window and a glass texture applied to simulate the windowpanes. The floor texture is an image obtained off of the web. The baseboard is a cylinder that was compressed along the perpendicular axis to the length. The child was created in Poser 2 and imported as a OBJ object. The hair was downloaded from Crowfoot Productions at http://www.greylight.com/. A green bump texture was applied to parts of the body to simulate pajamas. I had originally placed the child in the opening in the room. Thanks to AXE, (don't know real name) for suggesting putting the child in her current position. I am really happy with the way that this image turned out. I love the play of light and shadows in the room. This image took me almost a month of evenings to complete and I am ready to move on to the next topic. I hope you enjoy this one. Thanks, Phillip L. Easton