TITLE: Dreamcatcher
NAME: Martin Glaude
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: webmaster@thestudentweekly.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.thestudentweekly.com/
TOPIC: Dreaming
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: dreamcat.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    3ds Max 4

TOOLS USED: 
    Photoshop for texture work and image conversion

RENDER TIME: 
    30 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    AMD Athalon XP 1600+ /w 256 megs of RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

A dreamcatch filters our the bad dream and allow in the good.  The protected
bedroom also features other cultural artifacts: African Masks, a Mexican print
on the walls, and an Atlantean lamp.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

This was my first project in 3DS Max (I was a POV-Ray/Moray user before) and my
first submittion to the competition.  I'm hoping to get a lot of constructive
criticism!

This project was a huge learning experience for me.  This was my first real
scene - everything before were individual objects.  As such, most of the pieces
have a lot of fine detail which just don't show up in the big picture (which
actually looks a bit plain).  Next time I'll concentrate on more sweeping
pieces of architecture.

The room, window included, is just a series of CSG'd boxes.  The bed model was
found online and is a work by DavidBlack@theWaveCave.com (didn't note the
URL).

The "Atlantean" lamp was a lot of fun because despite being fairly simple, it
let me play with an truly original design.  The base is a highly reflective
gold material, and the glass globe contains a blue volumetric light with a fog
atmospheric effect.

The African design-inspired masks were created from editable meshes.  Because of
the darkness of the room and the lack of multiple shadow sources, I had to
create a pretty distorted face for it to look right in the final image - an up
close or profile shot of the masks would be a completly different experience. 
I love trompe l'oeil!

Finally - the dreamcatcher itself.  This was the piece that I created first -
without knowing what the scene would end up being.  I had imagined a close up
of the dreamcatch and so a lot of detail went into the original design -
twisted leather strips to form the webbing, carefully tweaked refraction/angles
in the crystals for lighting effects, etc...  I actually had to remove most of
the finer detailing just to get the crystals to show up properly in the final
image!

The "dreams" are particle systems.  The bad dreams are a SuperSprays hitting a
PDynaFlector.  The good dream is a SuperSpray following an animation path.  All
dreams are self-illuminating and have a blur lens effect applied.

The moonlight is a spot light with volumetric fog.  I was hoping for more
defined shadows in the fog - oh well.

The biggest problem I faced was when I formatted my harddrive and I forgot to
backup the texture and opacity maps for the feathers!  In the end, I got
something close to the original, but not as good.

Have fun everyone - can't wait until the next topic is posted!