TITLE: Spirit of Freedom
NAME: Michael Hunter
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: intertek@one.net
WEBPAGE: http://www.interactivetechnologies.net
TOPIC: Decay
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: spirit.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    3D Studio Max Version 5.1

TOOLS USED: 
    3D Studio Max, PhotoShop (for texture maps, resizing image),
Simbiont plug-in (http://www.darksim.com/)

RENDER TIME: 
    5 Hours 55 Minutes @ 2000x1000

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 4 1.8 GHz 261 MB RAM

INSPIRATION:
There was a wonderful image back in the Mystery round made by Richard Massey
entitled "The Mystery of Airships". I was really captivated by the image. It
shows a city in ruins with zeppelins floating in the air above what were once
streets. According to the story the balloons are searing the remains of the
city for survivors. The magic of the image for me was the contrast between the
heavy, dark, rot filled buildings and the balloons. It symbolized spirit vs.
hard reality. Richard really got the ingredients right in that picture. But
(forgive me Richard) I thought that the drama had been lost somehow. I was just
itching to try my own hand at the scene. When I learned the topic was decay I
saw it as a blessing from the gods to follow this drive (I also talked with
Richard to alert him to my plans and he graciously encouraged me to proceed.)


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

I though it was important to put us, the viewer, in the scene. I didn't want to
have the camera just float in the air. I figured that if I put you into one of
the decayed buildings and show enough architectural details to establish a
sense of scale then your relationship to the image changes from spectator to
one of the characters.

Also I wanted to contrast the oppressive atmosphere of the decayed buildings
with something optimistic. My thought was to tweak Richard's original story.
Here the balloon is not from some better place come to carry off people but a
strange flying machine created out of the debris. Not only does it represent
freedom but shows an individual's victory over adversity.

Of course I had to come up with a plausible design. It had to look like it could
fly, be made out of available materials, and be something that could be made by
one person (maybe with some help of friends). I looked over every web site
about balloons, zeppelins, blimps, airships, and flying machines. (It was truly
a fascinating bit of research! I can't imagine who invented some of those odd
machines not alone who was brave enough to flying them.) I learned that in
addition to the Write brothers there were others who flew homemade machines.

I decided to use a VW bug for a gondola. The engine powers two propellers on
either side of the car. The fins on the balloon are cable controlled (the long
beam that extends between and behind the propellers has guides for the cables.
The tail is made out of galvanized metal (as you would find in duct work). The
balloon itself is fabric. I'm afraid I can't explain where all the fabric came
from nor the gas in the balloon. Maybe someone with an engineering background
would argue that this would never work. I did my best to be convincing at least
to the average person. I want you to believe the tall tail I'm spinning so I
don't want any obvious design flaws.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

Everything in this image was modeled for this image with the exception of the
woman. I made her for the Mystery competition but ended up building a different
woman for that. So she now has her chance. She is 100% 3D Studio Max and has a
skeleton that deforms her mesh skin when it is repositioned. This makes
positioning her less difficult but setting up the envelopes (which defines what
bone affects which vertices) was a long painful process. I think Character
Studio (which I don't have) would help make this "rigging" less traumatic.

In Max you can grab the edge of a polygon and(while holding down shift) you can
extend the mesh - creating a new row of polygons. It's a simple and intuitive
process. I use this method to build most organic objects such as the woman and
the car. The car took me about two and a half days to build this way.

The arch above the doorway is and extruded spline. I bevel cut the ends using
Boolean tools. The only trick is to calculate the angle. 

Technically speaking, this picture really isn't about modeling. Sure it's got a
human and a car but the big deal here is the textures. And the most difficult
texture was that for the balloon. I used cylindrical mapping for all but the
rounded end. That section was divided up into five pieces each planar mapped.
This made aligning the texture at the edges more complex but eliminated an
unnatural stretch that often occurs on curved surfaces.

Though the mapping of the other textures was less complex the development of the
textures took some work. The billboard, "Enjoy King Club Soda", required
developing the poster image and then aging it. PhotoShop is absolutely awesome
for building up layered textures. Most all of the textures have two maps, a
bump map and a diffuse color map.

All of the textures require many test renderings because they are sensitive to
lighting, angle of view and distance from the camera. To keep the number of
test renderings to a minimum I try to work on several textures at once. Each
test rendering then tests ten textures rather than just one. This methodology
changes the pace of work. Rather than doing a little something then waiting to
see how it turns out, if you can test render many things then one rendering
while you are at lunch can give you enough to keep you busy the rest of the
day. There are exceptions but this idea can save you many hours.

LINKS:
Richard Massey's original image:
http://www.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/2003-06-30/thexmyst.jpg
Corrispoinding text file
http://www.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/2003-06-30/thexmyst.txt

A truly festinating account of early flight:
http://www.flyingmachines.org

