TITLE: Tradition
NAME: Ian Shumsky
COUNTRY: UK
EMAIL: ianshumsky@hotmail.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.outerarm.demon.co.uk/graphics/graphics.html
TOPIC: Worship
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: is_wrshp.jpg
ZIPFILE: is_wrshp.zip
RENDERER USED: 

    Nathan Kopp's POV MegaPatch 0.6


TOOLS USED: 

    Paint Shop Pro 5
    Poser 3
    Thomas Baier's 3D Win


RENDER TIME: 

    Time For Parse:    0 hours  0 minutes  46.9 seconds (46 seconds)
    Time For Photon:   0 hours  0 minutes   7.0 seconds (7 seconds)
    Time For Trace:    9 hours 30 minutes  30.0 seconds (34230 seconds)
        Total Time:    9 hours 31 minutes  23.0 seconds (34283 seconds)

Without area lights, radiosity or photons, render time is arround 15 mins.


HARDWARE USED: 

    PII 300MHz, 64 Meg, 1 Gig swap, running Win95


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


I think the image pretty much speaks for itself. Money. Something we
all aspire to, even though we know we shouldn't. Something that is
almost within reach but just too far away. Something on a pedestal,
elevated, protected.

This isn't the image I was planning on creating. My main idea was
for an image relating to Cargo Cults with several arms pointing to a
passing military cargo plane. I wrote a macro to orient a cylinder
to point to an arbitrary point and this image was one of the sample
images I came up with. I did a little more work on it and liked where
it was going, but there was this sneaky little thought that said I'd
seen the image somewhere before.

I checked a few of my gallery bookmarks and found that my image had a
striking similarity to Gilles Tran's 'An Idol' image (at
http://www.oyonale.com/ldc/english/ldc0612.htm). I decided to abandon
the image and see if I could manage something else, but I also posted
the image to p.b.i. I had a couple of positive responses suggesting I
should enter it (including one from Gilles), so here it is.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


The source file contains everything apart from the arm meshes, the arm
UV map and the font.

Arms
==========

The arms themselves are Poser 3 arms. There are 24 different meshes -
male/female, left/right and 6 poses. A macro randomly determines one
depending upon a series of pre-specified thresholds. There is also a
macro to orient a vertical cylinder to point to any given point from
any given point. This is passed the origin and the look at point and
it sets an x and y rotation for the cylinder. By combining the two
macros with a while loop to rotate the origin point away from the
look at point in a series of circles, the reaching sea of arms was
created.

Even though they form such a large part of the image, I really don't
like the arms. They are typical Poser 3 arms - angular and hairless -
and look more like mannequin arms. (Are Poser 4 characters any
better?) I am also unhappy with the fingernail texture - they seem far
too reflective.

Dollar
==========

This is simply a true-type font, oriented so it is centred on xz. It
is placed on a very simple CSG construct of a pedestal.

Lighting
==========

There are 13 spotlights in the scene. 12 of them are oriented around
the dollar symbol while the 13th is directly above. Each of the 12
lights surrounding the dollar have a different colour, cycling through
red, white and blue. The above light is white.