TITLE: U 995
NAME: Alexander Ebel
COUNTRY: Germany
EMAIL: alexander.ebel@online.de
WEBPAGE: http://www.desert-of-the-real.de
TOPIC: Surrealism
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: ae_u995.jpg
RENDERER USED: 


    mental ray for Maya (version 3.2.2.1)



TOOLS USED: 


    Maya 5.0



RENDER TIME: 


    About half an hour



HARDWARE USED: 


    AMD Athlon XP 1701-D




IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 



Surrealism wouldn't be surrealism if you'd explain it. I could describe the
obvious (well, there's a type VII-submarine in the sahara-desert) but you
already know that, because you're able to see. The first question you might
have, is: "What the hell does a submarine do in a desert?!" ...I don't know.
;-)






DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 



Thanks to my good friend Ben! He supported me with submarine-material and
advised me. He told me a lot about submarines. I decided to make a
type VII C/41 submarine. It's a german boat from WWII. In one book I found
some really useful blueprints. I used scanned versions of them in maya
as image plane-backdrops in the isometric views. I rebuilt the curves
of the "Spantenriss" with NURBs-curves. Then I could use the loft-function
to make the hull of the boat. I had a hard time until it worked as I
wanted. Originally I wanted to make a NURBs-surface, but I realised that
it looks better with polygons. The rest of the boat is also mainly done
with polygon-modeling. The desert consists of a bunch of NURBs-patches.
I added an atmosphere for a more realistic look. In the rendering I
used final gathering, for the neat shadows. I had to tweak everything
some time, until it looked natural.


The depicted submarine is the U 995. I chose this special boat, because
I once visited it as a kid and therefore I have a personal impression of
it (and some very helpful, self shot photos).


The U 995 was one of nearly 700 Type VII submarines, the largest class
constructed by Germany during World War II. Her combat patrol area was 
mainly in the North Sea and Arctic waters. She sank four Allied ships 
totaling over 9,000 tons. Five of her crew were wounded when the submarine 
came under attack by a Royal Canadian Air Force Sunderland flying boat on 
May 21, 1944. 

U 995 was struck from the Navy List at Trondheim, Norway on May 8, 1945, 
after which she was transferred to the Royal Norwegian Navy and renamed 
Kaura. This "save" kept her from being scrapped. Returned to Germany in 
1971, U-995 was installed in her permanent berth, a concrete cradle, 
in the care of the non-profit Deutscher Marinebund. She is located in 
the small seaside town of Laboe on the Baltic coast near Kiel.