TITLE: A quiet place
NAME: Jim Knepley
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: jknepley@chisp.net
WEBPAGE: http://skinner.chisp.net/raytrace
TOPIC: Gardens
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: quietpla.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Ray Dream Studio 5.01

TOOLS USED: 
    Modeled entirely in RDS, Photoshop helped create textures

RENDER TIME: 
    ~35 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    AMD K6-3/400, 128MB RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

A quiet place that I can go to get away from it all.  A favorite spot for
reading in the shade of the afternoon.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

Highlights of the techniques used in this image:
(nothing too exciting, but some are worth remembering)
*  The blades of grass are planes with spike and bend deformers added.  Multiple
copies of the basic "grass" plate were rotated and skewed to add chaos to the
overall effect.
*  The bushes and tree leaves are booleaned spheres and an explosion deformer. 
Adding a chaotic color map and a bump map add to the illusion.
*  The body of the tree is a number of free-form objects and is largely an
example of the tree from The Ray Dream Handbook.  The true nature of the model
is covered somewhat by the bark texmap.
*  The stones of the path are all free-form objects.  The cross section is a
rounded rectangle that is extruded along a rock-shaped envelope.
*  The foreground "ground" object is a mild extrusion of a grayscale image. 
Having a perfectly flat ground just didn't look right.
*  The "dirt" along the path is part of the texture map applied to the
foreground "ground."  The technique and textures were inspired by online
tutorials.
*  The overall look of the terrain behind the scene is inspired by the view from
my parent's deck.  I left out the broadcast towers, though.  :-)