TITLE: No Such Thing Indeed !
NAME: Bill Leonard
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: wal@ids.net
TOPIC: Mythology
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: waldragn.jpg
ZIPFILE: waldragn.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    cRays

TOOLS USED: 
    sPatch, SP2CRays, Ulead PhotoImpact, Autodesk Texture Universe

RENDER TIME: 
    1 hour, 55 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    2.4 MHz Pentium


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


        A dragon steps out of its image taking offense at being labeled
"Mythical" and "non-existent".


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


Models:
        cRays is a homebrew ray tracer developed by me. The scene description
language is C++. The environmet is Microsoft Visual C++.net. 
        The dragon's body was modeled with sPatch, exported to POV format and
converted to valid C++ statements by SP2CRAYS (also homebrew). The body was
shaped to follow a "wire" which added twist to the neck, torso and tail. The
underside of the body was cloned so it could be textured separately from the
upper body.
        The dragon's left thigh, calf, foot, and toes were modeled separately
using sPatch and converted to C++ as above. Joints at the hip, knee, ankle, and
toes allowed pivoting to position the leg. The right leg is a mirror image of
the left but independently positioned.
        sPatch was used for the dragon's head. I used different layers for the
eyes, upper pallet and teeth. The jaw was modeled separately with layers for
the lower pallet and teeth. A jaw joint allowed opening the mouth. A neck joint
allowed the head to swivel.
        The dragon's left wing was modelled in cRays from two spiral arcs and 3
patches (one large patch did not mate with the spiral arc very well). The
trailing edge was carved by subtracting two flattened cylinders. The right wing
is just a mirror image of the left one and, like the legs, each wing has joints
for adjusting position.
        Finally, the arms are really just small legs (minus the thigh). I also
lengthened the toes and narrowed the foot to make a forearm.
        The center scroll was constructed in cRays by making a Hermite curve
follow a spiral curve. The scroll was duplicated and the duplicates were moved
around to make the pile of 3 scrolls.
        The flattened piece of the scroll is a patch created in cRays to match
the edge of the coiled portion of the scroll.
        I had intended to just leave a burn mark on the scroll but the image
seemed incomplete without a burning fire and, besides, without the fire, the
burn looked more like the dragon vomited. At the eleventh hour I scrambled to
make fire by manipulating the color and transparency of an elliptical cylinder
- the best I could come up with so late.
        The walls, table surface, and wall hanging are simple thin boxes.

Textures:
        The burled table surface, rough flat scroll surface, stucco walls, and
wall hanging image maps are from Texture Universe(tm) by Autodesk. By
purchasing their product I am permitted to use their texture images in my
work.
        The "flat" scroll surface is a composite of text, the "rough" texture
and two images made by me: the 2D image drawing of the dragon is from an
earlier ray trace of the dragon converted to a line drawing. The burned section
of the scroll is hamburger grease that I let dry and then scanned. It looked
like an interesting burn texture until applied to the paper surface under the
scene lighting where it looked more like the dragon got sick than like a burn.
It is now mostly obscured by fire and smoke anyway. I used Ulead PhotoImpact
for the texture map manipulations and to add my initials to the final render.

        Source files of the scene description language are included in the ZIP
package and should give some clue as to the details of the scene construction.
sPatch files are also included but not the converted export files because they
are just a list of patches and vectors which don't contribute to the
understanding of the scene construction. The Autodesk texture image files are
excluded for obvious reasons.





