EMAIL: sammyf@wanadoo.fr NAME: Sammy Fischer TOPIC:Old Technology COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: encyclopedia COUNTRY: France WEBPAGE: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/sammyf RENDERER USED: Maxon Cinema 4D XL TOOLS USED: Corel Photopaint RENDER TIME:around 20'' at 1152x864 ( forgot to write it down) HARDWARE USED: Athlon XP 1700+, 512 MB RAM IMAGE DESCRIPTION: most of the description is written in the image anyway. just a small fact : strangely, in the future, information will still be saved in one of the oldest storage technology : books (even though I would love to have a book with an holografic display like this;) DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: hmm ... this is once again one of those 'technically quite uninteresting' entries. Anyway : * the high render time is due to surface shadows. Notice how the shadow of the robot legs are hard near the beginning and get softer with distance. Normally I don't use them, as they tend to use huge amount of times. Hmm .. one leg of the robot is up by design. It is supposed ot be moving. * the holographic CD is made of three different rings. Although I could have used different textures on the same disc, I thought it looked better like this. I applied a vertically increasing alpha channel to all three discs to make the point that it ISN'T ACTUALLY THERE. Note also, that it has a front and backside. In the first test renderings, I had the front side showing, with a CD label and colourfull pictures, but then realized, that the interesting aspect of a CD in such a book, would be the backside. You can still see parts of the picture as a reflection in the book and showing through the reflective layer though. (it's a picture the from Bubble-Gum Crisis Collector DVD edition;) * the nano-robot is entirely made of primitives. it was an afterthought anyway. * the vertical glowing of the holographic display is a volumetric light with a texture. I didn't want it to start throwing light everywhere. so it's not emiting any light at all. * the green glowing around the holographic display is probably the single most interesting thing in the whole picture (don't expect anything spectacular though;) : as C4D is unable to render glowing textures behind objects, even if they have a 100% transparent alpha channel (glow is postprocessed, and the map for the post-process doesn't differentiate between textures:\, I had to prerender a glowing box, and then apply it as a self-illumination texture. Works ok for the most parts. If you didn't notice any artifacts yet ... well ... please don't search ;) * The book ... well ... boxes, stuff ... you get the picture. nothing really fancy. * the table is a ground object (I told you it was technically rather uninteresting, didn't I?;) * the text is mine, and this is my text ... by Anne Elk (that's A.N.N.E. Elk, not An Elk) .. sorry ... old Monty Python Joke. And it's not really true anyway. the boxed content is from http://www.karbosguide.com and is the only part you should believe. The rest might contain errors (especially in the later parts;). Hmm ... there is actually ONE information that is really valid : CDs don't survive near seacoasts. After 3-4 weeks, the reflective layer has been destroyed in many places (my brother who builds sailboats said it was due to a bacteria which also damages the paint on boat-hulls). the only solution I found was to have a climatised room or to put the CDs and DVDs in the fridge. ('so ... what are we going to eat today? Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings Collectors Edition?') As I said, technically rather uninteresting picture, but I like its look and it was finished within 2 days. After that I just didn't know how I could improve it without cluttering. Same thing happened to me in the history round, so I'm getting used to it.