TITLE: Imagine
NAME: Alan Wong
COUNTRY: United States of America
EMAIL: alan.2.wong@uconn.edu
TOPIC: Insects and Spiders
COPYRIGHT: I Submit To The Standard Raytracing Competition Copyright.
JPGFILE: awxximag.jpg
RENDERER USED: 

  3D Studio Max R3.0


TOOLS USED: 

  IrfanView32 2.80


RENDER TIME: 

  1 Hour 30 Minutes

Scene Statistics:
  218099 Vertices
  430019 Faces
  573 Objects


HARDWARE USED: 

  Athlon Thunderbird 800@920
  384MB Physical RAM
  542MB Virtual Memory
  Logitech MouseMan+ Wheel
  3M Precise Mousing Surface

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Image Idea:
  Similar to my last image (with the beer can and the ants), the idea
  for this image came spontaneously. Of course, it took some work
  to that point. At first, I wanted a realistic butterfly image, with
  a caterpillar, but as I worked on that, I got bored since my previous
  image for IRTC was also a realistic insect. So I got thinking, and
  tried to make a strange butterfly that was impossible in real life...
  the stainglass butterfly. And then I made a pipecleaner butterfly.
  After making the pipecleaner butterfly, I looked back at the
  stainglass butterfly, and it just was not getting anywhere good, so I
  ditched it and fixed up the pipecleaner butterfly, and figured I
  could make a whole scene with pipecleaners. That ultimately did not
  happen since I have a cardboard tube, construction paper, and lots
  of tape in the scene as well.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

  A kindergarten class had an assignment, to make some sort of display
  about some sort of insect. With a unanimous vote, the kids wanted
  to make a display with the butterfly as the insect. Using whatever
  materials they could in the classroom, the kids (and the teacher)
  built this display after several days of hardwork.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

  Just as a note, all textures in this scene are procedural materials
  that I have made in 3dsmax. No bitmaps were used. Also, all objects
  in the scene are made by me. No premade objects were used. And finally
  I did not use anyone elses work.

  Ok then... here we go:

  The smaller butterfly, flowers, sun, clouds, and outlines of the
  mountain are all pipecleaners. They were all made in a similar manner.
  Basically, I will take lots of splines and make structure of object,
  and then loft it with a circle. Then set a material to it, and bingo,
  a lot of wires. The final step was to put fur on it with Shag:Fur,
  a second bingo, I got a pipecleaner stucture. Set some color to the
  fur with a pastel colored material, and there we go...

  The background, the ground, and the grass were all made in a similar
  manner as well. I would take a rectangular spline, make it 8.5x11
  and then modify it from there. Many were just whole sheets of paper,
  but those that are cut are not larger than the sheets of paper. The 
  cuts, though, were simple to make. Just add more vertices to the 
  spline, and move them around. The grass and mountains were done like 
  this. Next, I made tape. I took a box, made it ?x.75x.001, where the
  ? is the length of the tape. Noise it to make the cuts at the ends 
  and then it was done. Then I just spent lots of time overlapping the 
  sheets of paper and then randomly putting tape at the overlaps. The
  material for this was much more difficult. Basically, its a
  composite material (love these... if you use max, use this often),
  with 4 layers. The main layer is just a simple noise to not let the
  paper take a solid tone. The next layer is a lot of nested fractal
  noises, simulating strands in the construction paper. It was colored 
  the color of the paper. The next layer is a similar thing, with 
  nested fractal noises, except it was white, to simulate the white
  strands. And the final layer is again, nested fractal noises, but
  black to simulate black strands. The white and black were made
  less opaque since they do not occur as much. The final product looked
  very convincing. The tape was much easier. It was just a material
  with an opacity map that was a noised gradient ramp, more opaque
  on the sides, less opaque in the middle.

  Next is the big butterfly in the middle. The construction paper wings
  were done like the rest of the construction paper in the picture,
  but with glitter added. I just made some flat squares and did a
  scatter on an extruded spline. The texture is a simple material
  with self illumination and a high shininess. The body was made with
  a cardboard tube, styrofoam, and more pipecleaners. The cardboard tube
  is just a tube, but with a brown version of the construction paper
  material, with something added. I put in the bump a gradient ramp, 
  but made it very thing, so that i could get a line. I then tilted it
  a bit and got the spiral on the tube. The styrofoam is just a sphere
  or half sphere with a material. The material was white or black, 
  with a heavy bump made with a cellular map. The pipecleaners were
  described before.

  And finally, I used my HUD again. I took a camera, 35mm, and bound
  the title and my logo to it so that they moved with the cam, then I
  just pointed the cam in the direction I wanted.

  The lighting was probably the second most difficult part of the scene,
  with the most difficult being the textures. In order to get the right
  lighting, I needed seven lights. This is due mostly to max's horrible
  renderer. Two of the lights were direct lights, put behind the
  background and under the ground to simulate the radiocity from those.
  The rest of the five lights were omnis, placed everywhere to light
  the scene up realistically.

  And that is the story of this little picture.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Past Entries:
 
  2001
    January-February
      (Worship)
     AWxxWtC.jpg
     AWxxWtC.txt
      "Worship the Can"

    May-June
      (Insects and Spiders)
     AWxxImag.jpg
     AWxxImag.txt
      "Imagine"
    
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Credits:
  Alan Wong

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

