TITLE: Cognitive Enhancement
NAME: Marlo Steed
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: marlo.steed@uleth.ca
TOPIC: Future
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: alcove.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Lightwave

TOOLS USED: 
    Lightwave for modeling and rendering - Painter 7 for creating the
textures

RENDER TIME: 
    12 hours - radiosity

HARDWARE USED: 
    Powerbook G4

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

The concept is, that at some point we will interface with technology - yeah,
call it cyborg but watered down.  In this instance, memory devices will be
designed to interface with our brains and extend our cognitive capabilities. 
Of course these will become fashionable items and worthy of showing off.  So
that is what I tried to depict with the girl and the device protruding from her
skull.  The company has a color label applied to advertise the latest version. 
The other aspect of these devices is that for a price, one can download all
kinds of useful knowledge and skills - enter the "Learning Alcove".  Step into
this location and new information can be downloaded into your enhanced memory
interface.  Welcome to the future of learning.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The actual building and the corridors started out as a simple box and from a
series of smooth shifts and bevels the structure emerged (then flipped the
polygons inward).  I wanted the future to be rounded with no square edges- so
everything was routered or beveled and then smoothed with subdivision surfaces.
 The texture for the floor was a serendipitous mistake; I had prepared a tiled
image in Painter but I applied it in the wrong dimensional plane but it looked
so cool, that I left it.  The structures and detail on the walls and in the
Learning Alcove were all modeled using a variety of primitives and techniques,
from extruding bezier curve created polygons, to beveling, shifting, and
routering.  The female models I customized by creating their dresses and
modifying facial features.  I also used a velvet texture which looks quite
good.  There were no lights in the scene (well at least in the modeling sense
of inserting lights) - except for a couple of spot lights back in the Learning
Alcove.  The entire scene was lit by the luminosity of the texture that was
applied to the actual lighting polygon along the ceiling.  With radiosity, the
texture's luminosity became the light source.  The blue and red  lights also
had luminosity cranked up and added a slight glow to emulate a light source.