EMAIL: xeo@home.com NAME: Josh Derr TOPIC: Water COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Jessica's Creek COUNTRY: USA WEBPAGE: http://www.3dillusion.com/~void RENDERER USED: Byrce 3d v3.1 TOOLS USED: Truespace, Photoshop, TreeDo, Fractint RENDER TIME: Approximatly 12 hours HARDWARE USED: Pentuim 200 IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Jessica wasn't content to stay home. She didn't want to play dolls in her room, or have tea parties. The land just beyond her open windows called to the adventurer inside her. Visions of crisp water, small animals, new, curious, interesting things, flashed through her impatient young mind. She ran out the back door, dressed in overalls and old shoes. Jumping over the fence from her backyard property, she paused to look around, and retrace her steps from her previous outing. A certain tree, and odd shaped rocked; she knew she was headed in the right direction. As she slipped down a gentle embankment, she recognized the surroundings. The large, shady tree she would climb. The thick, clay-packed mud that would coat her shoes and cover her hands. And the water, cutting an irregular path through the middle of it all. She had discovered it all. It was her special place. It was her creek. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Overview: As you may have already guessed, this picture was originally planned for the ‘nature’ round, but never got around to doing much with it. Modeling: The picture started its life as a height field for the ground. A separate height field was generated for the water, made from hand-drawing the waves to match the contours of the land over which it flows. This gives the creek water a somewhat realistic look, verses generic waves. If you look carefully, you can see the water flow around the dirt, both on the banks, and in the stream itself. For the plants, I originally used the Bryce stock plants, but was disappointed by the lack of detail in the texturing and shape. So, I modeled my own plants. All the plants use on basic model, a swept curve. Then I randomly transformed and rotated the leaves, to give each plant a more natural looks. I used TreeDo, along with TrueSpace to create, and then deform, the tree trunk/roots to the left side of the screen. The frog was pretty simple. He is modeled out of deformed spheres. For the scale it works well, though he looks a little cartoony up close. Texturing: The water is pretty simple. A bluish-clear texture, with a light wave bump map, an moderate refraction and reflection. The dirt I'm somewhat proud of. If you notice, near the water lever, it gets darker, smoother, and shiny. Unfortunatly, The lighting in the scene doesn't do it nearly enough justice. But it still does a convincing dirt-mud texture in my opinion. The creek bed is a modified Bryce stock texture, using a bump map to create the illusion of small, smooth rocks under the surface of the water. The plants were a lot of work. Initially, I wanted to use the stock plants that come with Bryce. But they where a flat green, and didn't look realistic enough for the scale I needed to use them at. So, I drew my own leaves, using Photoshop. For the ferns, I created a fractal fern, then sketched over it in Photoshop. Separate bump maps were also created for all the plants, to help give them more texture. The tree to the left foreground uses a Bryce texture I blatantly ripped off from one of its stock models(hey, it works perfect, otherwise I would have done it myself). The frog uses a simple black/green spotted texture. Other notes: Somehow, early on in the scene, the frog got named 'Mr. Frog'. I don't know why. He also has a small wake behind him, though you can't really see it. Towards the final stages of this scene, I readjusted the color of the plants and the river to make the scene more colorful. Originally, the river was less blue, almost completely clear, and the ground was a little more beige. It looked very realistic, though somewhat bland, causing the stream ripples and mud to become washed out. I decided to go for bit more 'bolder' look, though more unrealistic looking(feedback was that the river looked metallic) to make the beautiful contours of the river stand out, as well as make the scene more eye-catching. I hope it works as planned.... Sorry I can't include the source files, but at 115mb, I think the IRTC might get mad if I uploaded it. If you want to see any models or textures, please email me @ xeo@home.com Conclusion: I really wanted to work on improving my texturing. With a program with powerfull texturing capabillites like Bryce, it has been a valuable learning experince. I feel somewhat pround of this scene, and am eagrly awaiting all the feedback from it. >)