TITLE: The Thread
NAME: Thierry Schmitt
COUNTRY: France
EMAIL: pumpkin@ringard.org
WEBPAGE: http://pumpkin.ringard.org
TOPIC: Mythology
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: thread.jpg
ZIPFILE: thread.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Lightwave 7.5

TOOLS USED: 
    Poser 4 , Paint Shop Pro 7

RENDER TIME: 
    54 mn

HARDWARE USED: 
    AMD Athlon XP2600+ , 512 Mo ram

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

(I just hope that my bad english will be understood)
The french title of the picture is "le fil" because, in French, the word
"fil"(eq. "thread") indicates
at the same time the thread of a cloth or, of course, the Ariadne thread, the
thread of a
spider and the edge of the sword, the three significances which I wanted to be
represented
in the scene. Alas, since the tower of Babel (to stay in mythology :-) ), the
words cannot
be translated any more correctly from one language to another, so, one of the
translation becomes
"edge" and the "pun" loses half its strengh.
Note : I send you only the lightwave scene description file (.lws) in the Zip
archive because the
size of the file with all the objects and textures reaches more than 9 Mo, which
seems a little
excessive to me and I fear that my email submission would be rejected for
excessive attachment size.
If you wish all the same to obtain the complete scene, you will be able to
download the whole scene
in a Zip archive at following URL :
http://pumpkin.ringard.org/raytracing/the_thread_1280.html 

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The "Theseus" character and his clothes are from Poser 4, except the sword that
I modelled.
The "Minotaur" character is an original character created by me in Poser 4, i.e.
by assembly of the
body of a man, with some personal morphings, and a remodelled "old" head bull.
I drew the texture of the "Minotaur" under Paint Shop Pro. Moreover, I reworked
the surfaces
of the two Poser objects under lightwave (the textures generated by Poser are
ugly !)
That's all for the work under "external tools".
Finaly, the last "not-created-by-me" object is the skeleton. I just retouch
certain parts
of the skeleton (breaked bones, holes,...)
I made all other objects, surfaces settings,... I only use basic lightwave tools
and the integrated
hypervoxel plugin (for the flame; I send you the .lws scene if you want to see
what tool or plugin
I used). The greatest part of work consisted in moving manually points and
polygons in the
lightwave modeler, to fully create objects or retouch the objects that aren't my
own product.
The technics I used are very simple and basic, so it's very difficult to explain
more in details
how the image was created, except if I write a boring hundred pages
documentation full of "move",
"drag",...
The final render is just converted to jpeg "as it was rendered", whithout gamma,
contrast or
brightness corrections.
I do not see which details I will be able to give you moreover, so ... goodbye
!