EMAIL: dana@studiowerks.com
NAME: Dana Adams
TOPIC: Elements
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Extremes (Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Solid, Liquid, Gas)
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: http://www.studiowerks.com
RENDERER USED: Ray Dream Studio 5.0 (RDS5)
TOOLS USED: 
RENDER TIME: 48 min 8 sec
HARDWARE USED: DELL XPS D333 - 333Mhz Pentium II

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

I wanted to use the classical elements - Earth, Air, Fire, Water.
Drawing on my commercial art experience from college (a long time ago)
and the world's current weather events (El Nino, greenhouse gasses,
global warming etc.) my mental image becomes digital - Extremes.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

Everything except the Earth & Cloud maps was created in RDS5 using native
tools - no plug-ins or particle systems were used.

The Earth & Cloud maps were posted on the web by Mister Print of Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, Canada (http://www.misterprint.com/planet/Earth.html) and are
used by permission. They were wrapped on two concentric spheres - with
the cloud map's sphere being slight larger than the surface map's sphere.
-- about an hour of development time.

The match stick was modeled in RDS5's free form modeler. The color, highlight, bump, and glow maps were created in Photoshop. They were used together to create a realistic wood grain, charcoal tip and glowing embers in the burning portion of the match.
-- this took about two hours (cumulative) to design, including the texture maps.

The flame was also created in the freeform modeler as a single shape.
The color, transparency, and glow maps were also created in Photoshop.
This was actually easier than I had originally thought, and it came out
better than I had hoped.
-- this took a about the same amount of time to develop and texture, two hours.

The ice cube was created in the mesh form modeler because I needed to tinker
with the vertices directly to give the cube a natural, ragged look. All of the maps (except for the bump map) used in the cube are procedural shaders - not image maps. I am really pleased with how well the cube came out - very real - the texture mapping most of the time used to develop this object.
-- this took a good deal of time in the modeler and texture mapping, 8 hours total.

Finally, the smoke, which was created in the free form modeller, was the
most difficult to get right. I ended up creating a convoluted tubular object that tapers at the ends. The color and transparency maps were created in photoshop.
-- About 40 hours total  for this component. (time includes all attempts, some awful, some very close but not quite right)