TITLE: Dividing Line
NAME: Marlo Steed
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: marlo.steed@uleth.ca
WEBPAGE: http://www.edu.uleth.ca/faculty/members/steed/
TOPIC: Opposites
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: divide.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Lightwave

TOOLS USED: 
    Lightwave for modeling and rendering, Painter for textures

RENDER TIME: 
    8 hours (larger version)

HARDWARE USED: 
    Powerbook G4

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere
insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them
from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts
through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece
of his own heart?" (The Gulag Archipelag, Alexander_Solzhenitsyn)

This quote from Alexander Solvhenitsyn was the theme for this image.  The notion
that opposites can coexist (in people) is a compelling topic that this image
tries to capture.  Below I have attempted to identify the various elements of
the image that are in opposition to each other:

Dimension of Opposites     <-->   Attributes of the Image
Good versus evil    <--> black and white textures
                             <--> YinYang image on the head (turbulated in
Painter)
                              <-->   smile and frown
                                <-->   scowling eye and bright eye
Color Opposition    <-->    blue and red eyes - opposite on the color wheel
Structural Opposition     <-->   Organic shape head versus the pyramids
                                      <-->   Organic rolling hills versus the
pyramids
Textural Opposition      <-->   Organic textures of the sky versus tiles
                                  <-->   organic textures of the head versus the
straight lines of the pyramid and the tiles



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The head was created from scratch; I started following a tutorial on the
Lightwave site for how to create a head from a box.  I added morph maps for
that various opposing looks in the eyes and the mouth. The head definitely
consumed the majority of the time on this project.   I applied custom maps
using UV textures.  The pyramids were created with a combination of various
multiply functions.  The sky was created with Skytracer, a built-in sky
generator in Lightwave.  I had intended to include a ground fog but discovered
that it was too slow; it would have taken a week to render and the results were
unpredictable (I would get the results looking great in the preview mode -
Viper but then the actual rendered results were totally different.  This was
very frustrating because the ground fog would have improved the picture
considerably.