------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Worship the Can Name: Alan Wong Country: United States of America Email: alan.2.wong@uconn.edu Topic: Worship Copyright: I Submit To The Standard Raytracing Competition Copyright. Filename: AWxxWtC.jpg AWxxWtC.txt ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Renderer Used: 3D Studio Max R3.0 Tools Used: Adobe Photoshop 6.0 IrfanView32 2.80 Render Time: 6 minutes and 18 seconds Hardware Used: Athlon Thunderbird 800 384MB Ram Logitech MouseMan+ Wheel 3M Precise Mousing Surface ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Image Description: Well, the topic is worship. And I thought, what can I do that is different? So I found my thoughts moving towards an ant, a lowly ant, but it had its God. That God being food, large amounts of food. But that was too boring. What else? So then my mind kept wandering as I model the ant, and a story started to form. That story is based on my current residence, a college dorm. And in a college dorm, some things take precedence. And it was thus, let me make an ad about what college students worship, using the lowly ant as the carrier of the message. And in that ad, I have two ants holding the can for all to see. Is it a life or death struggle for the can or is it a friendly drinking buddy who wants to help out? Why not you make that personal preference next time you see a can of RedLine. Notes: The RedLine brand does not exist, I made that up. Also, I do not drink alcohol. And do not drink and drive, but since they are ants, there are no worries. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Description Of How This Image Was Created: Ok, now to be serious. This is my second attempt at using splines as a modelling tool. My first was modelling my head, which came out decently but not good enough for this contest, and it was not going to fit any story I had in my mind. So anyway, here I go: The ant was made using both spline modelling (using MaxR3's built in surface modifier) and mesh modelling. The splines were used to make the entire ant itself, using reference pictures from various places (internet sites, books, animal cards, etc.), and then a surface mod was placed on it. I made the ant in sections (as an ant would be due to the exoskeleton) and I also tweaked the surface with edit mesh. Nothing more to say other than it took 5 days of really long hours to finish. In the mesh modeling area, I modelled the "mouth" from a sphere. You cannot really see it since it is covered by hair, which is the second thing I made from meshes. I just made a rectangular prism with 2 sections, welded one end to make a point, welded an edge to make it into a 3 sided long thing, and bent it. Then I used MaxR3's Scatter to put it everywhere. This hair helped to kill the render time. Next is the texture of the ant, which was tough. I love MaxR3's composite procedural, and I used it to make the dirt like stuff on the ant. Basically the main channel is the ant's color (using MaxR3's raytrace texture) and the next couple channels are the ant's dirt using noise. Add some bump and there we go. But there was too much dark shadow areas so I added some color to the black shadow areas with the raytraced texture. Done. The can came next. Simple spline work here. Make a half cross section then lathe it. Done. The texture on the can consists of frost on top of the logo. Frost is done with some noise opacity maps and bump and specular and so on. The can logo was made in Photoshop. Both were placed into a composite procedural. And finally the posing part. The text is all actual 3d objects that have no depth that are several inches from the camera. The fonts were found on the internet from months or years before. The logo on the bottom is mine, and I just rendered my logo animation in sections, and textured a block with it. The RedLine logo is the same logo as on the can, except with an alpha channel, easy. Bind all to camera so it would move with the camera, like a HUD. I then proceded to move the ants' joints and such to meet the can, hoping nothing intersected, and do some test renders to make sure. Add in clouds in the back with an opacity cloud map thing, and make a flat mirror with bump for the ground. And that is the story of this little pic. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Additional Information: I am a college student (freshmen), and this is my first IRTC entry though I have frequented the site to look for techniques and ideas. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Credits: Alan Wong -------------------------------------------------------------------------