TITLE: The Place to Be
NAME: JD Craig
COUNTRY: US
EMAIL: AzChip@aol.com
TOPIC: The City
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
RENDERER USED: RayDream 3D (MetaCreations' stripped down, entry level 3D modeler and renderer)
TOOLS USED: RayDream 3D to model, Adobe Photoshop 5.0 and Mayura Draw for textures, Adobe Photoshop LE to color-correct.
RENDER TIME: 15 minutes
HARDWARE USED: Compaq Armada 1750 laptop
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
   A down-on-his-luck drifter takes a smoke break in the doorway of a downtown shop, while the store's glamorous mannequin looks ahead.
   I've made the image dark and dirty in the hope of conveying a sense of dispair and irony.

   Thanks to the IRTC committee for allowing vertical compositions to be submitted!
DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
   This is my second IRTC entry; I've only been working with RayDream 3D for about six months.  My first entry resulted in many much-appreciated constructive comments, and I think I've improved a bit with this one.
   Everything in this image was created in RayDream 3D's free-form modeller except for the walls of the store which are primitive cubes.  Each of the sidewalk segments are individually modified shapes allowing for cracks and nicks to be modelled in.  The mannequin (I used a figure downloaded from 3D Cafe as a reference) and the seated figure were built piece by piece and assembled in the overall composition.
   The reflection of distant city lights on the store windows come from a digital painting I did in Photoshop of buildings silohuetted against a gradient sky.  The poster was designed in Mayura Draw, a shareware program that creates 2D vector graphics.  I dirtied the poster up in Photoshop.
   All of the textures except the wood on the top of the storefront, the water in the gutter and the storefront window glass were built from BMP's I created in Photoshop.  The wood is a procedural texture I created in RayDream 3D.  The bitmaps are huge; hence no zip file accompanying this submission.  If you're interested in the models or any of the bitmaps, let me know; I can make them available.
   I'm most pleased with the smoke from the cigarette.  I struggled with freeform modelling for a long time before it occurred to me to paint the smoke in photoshop and map it onto a transparent plane and place it in the scene.  That done, I used the same technique for the dry grass beside the building.