TITLE: Asian Celebration at Dusk
NAME: ClickQuickNow.com
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: staff@clickquicknow.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.clickquicknow.com
TOPIC: Spirit of Asia
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
RENDERER USED: 3D Studio MAX
TOOLS USED: Adobe Photoshop (for textures/maps and ID tag), Poser (for figures), Serif Photoplus (for convert into JPG), Internet (for inspiration)
RENDER TIME: Approx. ~ 3 min.
HARDWARE USED: Gateway2K, 733MHz Pentium IIIe, 512MB RAM, Radeon All-in-Wonder Pro w/ 32MB RAM
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
Introduction to Inspiration:
My original idea was to create a 3D collage of significate architecture, history etc.  I searched the internet for pictures and found several including -- the temple, geishas, lion... I also found images of Iwa Jima, and the War Memorial. After creation of the lion and temple, I realized that I was heading in a different direction. The two seemed to fit together well. I continued to build from a new idea...

Scene Description:
It is dusk, the parade has just begun. People are gathering in the temple courtyard under the watch of the Holy Mount Fugi. Is it a Japanese celebration? Maybe the Chinese New Year. Traditional decorations hang from the temple with their subtle glow. The crowd is smiling. They are claping and pointing at the dancing geishas and the beautiful lion. This scene is filled with tradition. It is tradition that makes the people of Asia happy. I hope you are happy to share it with them.
DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
Dancing Lion:
The Lion (sometimes mistaken for a Dragon) was created almost entirely out of meshes. Also, in most cases, every vertice from those meshes needed to be edited. This Lion was truely sculpted. The only texture/map that I didn't create was the gold-leaf for the head. That was one of the original textures for 3D Studio MAX. It was, however, modified a great deal to achieve the desired look.

Holy Temple:
This is a/the Heian Temple. I spent a large amount of time creating this piece. Every texture/map is completely original. There is surprisingly much less copy/paste/cloning done here that it may look. I wish the JPG upload could show the detail hidden there. As it is, the file is just below the 250K limit. The chinese lettering found throughout the scene, translates to the word "Winner" -- hint hint  ;-)

Holy Mount Fugi:
Can you believe that this 3D representation of Mount Fugi is actual size! It had to be set very far back in the scene to look the way I wanted it to. The texture/map is an unedited picture of the real thing. The mesh however is totally original. A simple cone, with some extra editing to the vertices for realizm.

Environment:
The sky, tree background, pavement, and foreground leaves are all taken from actual photographs with a small amount of editing to correct color. Made into GIF textures/maps so I could use them also as opacity maps. It's a better 3D look that way.

Dancing Giesha:
Unfortunately there wasn't as much work done on these as I would have liked to. With more time, I would have created them in Poser. They were a last minute addition. All were extracted from a screen grab and simply pasted onto a small 3D surface. It was done this way so that they would render with the rest of the scene and not break any of the rules of this competition.

Decorations:
These are original in every way. I only went from memory here. All of the textures/maps are original. There is that chinese lettering again that spells, "Winner". These objects are what takes so long to render... there is a light source in each one.

Trees:
Cones with a whole lot of bending going on here. With this object there were many times when the copy/paste/clone tool was used. There is only one leaf, one twig cluster, 3 small branch types and 5 large branch types. Made from scratch, without the use of any program to create them for me. This proved to be a very difficult task. There were a great many re-renders to position the branches etc.

Crowd:
All are customized Poser figures. Very detailed skin textures/maps were used. Yet other thing to be lost in the JPG conversion. Customized faces and bodies make them appear to be of Asian desent. There are about 5 female types and 6 male types. I don't know how many people there are total.

Overall:
Everything here was created from scratch. I have spent many hours working on it, and am happy with the result. I hope you enjoy looking at it. I am making available all of the files I used to create this. There is over 130MB worth of data. Everything will be included... Textures/maps, 3D Studio Max scenes/objects, Poser Figures, Rendered Scenes, and everything else. Total $19.95 and I'll send you a CD with the works. I will accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Check, eCheck, and Money Order. If you want one, just send  your request to: staff@clickquicknow.com  and I'll send you the details.

Thank You for taking the time to read this... don't forget to rate this image.