EMAIL: amason@cs.uct.ac.za
NAME: Ashton Mason
TOPIC: Imaginary Worlds
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Imaginary numbers
COUNTRY: South Africa
WEBPAGE: http://www.cs.uct.ac.za/~amason/silicon.trip/Integers/index.html
RENDERER USED: 3D Studio MAX 2.5
TOOLS USED: Photoshop, Character Studio
RENDER TIME: about 10 minutes
HARDWARE USED: Pentium 2 233 Mhz, 128 MB RAM
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

"Bored with his mundane life as an integer, Bill dreamed of the thrill
and excitement of being an imaginary number"

The image is intended to be a cartoon, basically in the style of Gary 
Larson. I wanted to show two integers in their kitch and rundown home, 
suggesting that integers are less interesting numbers than imaginary 
numbers (an abstract number type used by mathematicians) and that they 
therefore might be bored with their mundane lives. The One character, 
called Bill, is dissatisfied with his life as an integer and dreams of 
being an imaginary number. But imaginary numbers are imaginary by 
definition so it is doubtful whether they exist or what their lives might 
be like. And numbers can't change what they are, so Bill's dreams will 
probably never be realised. Ultimately the joke is on those who wish 
continually for imaginary worlds, forgetting to live in the real world 
around them.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

For the One and Zero characters I used extruded text for the bodies
and meshsmoothed hand-edited meshes for the arms and legs. I used 
Character Studio to position the characters into appropriate
poses. This is the first time I've tried to use Character Studio
and it has been a good learning experience.

I created the chair using the same method as I used for the character
arms and legs: meshsmoothing a hand-edited mesh. The wallpaper is a 
Julia fractal created in Fractint. The carpet texture was created with 
the built in MAX cellular map.