EMAIL: icin3d@bloomer.net
NAME: Tom Szalajka
TOPIC: Fortress
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Hardened Heart
COUNTRY: USA
RENDERER USED: 
    Lightwave 6.5

TOOLS USED: 
    Adobe Photoshop 6 (PS)

RENDER TIME: 
    4 hours, 48 min, 27sec

HARDWARE USED: 
    Mac B/W 450 G3, .5GB RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

After sketching a whole slew of castle drawings only to find myself making 
3-pointers from across the room, I decided to take a different view on my 
focal point of Fortress.  Being a scifi guy, I love the opportunity to create 
laser-blasting battle scenes.  Fire, smoke and plasma disinegration, it all 
makes for great fun in the eye of the beholder (and illustrator).  However, 
I wanted to throw a philosophical twist into the mix.  So my object under 
fire, plated in armor alloy, protected by a gallery of defenses, yet naked 
to the wind, resembles the symbolic human heart.  And I guess I can say that 
we’ve all had our hearts broken at one time or another.  And given time, 
we’re able to repair the damage set upon us by circumstance.  So through 
time’s plentiful game of trial and error, we learn to build defenses.  
Protecting that all too vulnerable oasis.  Leaving the glow and warmth intact 
with a steady abundance.  For it is the interior of the human soul that 
breaths life into the heart of humanity.  Passion, love, humor and 
personality all tap into the warmth that drives our need to give from 
down deep.   Oh… where was I?  Oh, my image.  Well like I said before, 
I thought it would be cool to take the symbolic heart and shroud it in 
armor and weapons.  Enough said.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

All object modeling was done in Newtek’s Lightwave Modeler program.  All 
textures are procedural except for the image-mapped caution sign which I 
got from some old pic art, the weathering stains, and the cat scratch which 
were made in PS.  The caution sign also got a treatment of the used-uglies 
via PS.  Volumetric lighting was used to create atmospheric changes and 
distortions.  Hypervoxels and lens flairs were used to create explosions 
and smoke.  PS was used post-rendering to adjust the gamma thing, add 
copyright date and jpeg conversion.