TITLE: Dreamcatcher
NAME: Martin Glaude
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: webmaster@thestudentweekly.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.thestudentweekly.com/
TOPIC: Dreaming
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
RENDERER USED: 3ds Max 4
TOOLS USED: Photoshop for texture work and image conversion
RENDER TIME: 30 minutes
HARDWARE USED: AMD Athalon XP 1600+ /w 256 megs of RAM
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
A dreamcatch filters our the bad dream and allow in the good.  The protected bedroom also features other cultural artifacts: African Masks, a Mexican print on the walls, and an Atlantean lamp.
DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
This was my first project in 3DS Max (I was a POV-Ray/Moray user before) and my first submittion to the competition.  I'm hoping to get a lot of constructive criticism!

This project was a huge learning experience for me.  This was my first real scene - everything before were individual objects.  As such, most of the pieces have a lot of fine detail which just don't show up in the big picture (which actually looks a bit plain).  Next time I'll concentrate on more sweeping pieces of architecture.

The room, window included, is just a series of CSG'd boxes.  The bed model was found online and is a work by DavidBlack@theWaveCave.com (didn't note the URL).

The "Atlantean" lamp was a lot of fun because despite being fairly simple, it let me play with an truly original design.  The base is a highly reflective gold material, and the glass globe contains a blue volumetric light with a fog atmospheric effect.

The African design-inspired masks were created from editable meshes.  Because of the darkness of the room and the lack of multiple shadow sources, I had to create a pretty distorted face for it to look right in the final image - an up close or profile shot of the masks would be a completly different experience.  I love trompe l'oeil!

Finally - the dreamcatcher itself.  This was the piece that I created first - without knowing what the scene would end up being.  I had imagined a close up of the dreamcatch and so a lot of detail went into the original design - twisted leather strips to form the webbing, carefully tweaked refraction/angles in the crystals for lighting effects, etc...  I actually had to remove most of the finer detailing just to get the crystals to show up properly in the final image!

The "dreams" are particle systems.  The bad dreams are a SuperSprays hitting a PDynaFlector.  The good dream is a SuperSpray following an animation path.  All dreams are self-illuminating and have a blur lens effect applied.

The moonlight is a spot light with volumetric fog.  I was hoping for more defined shadows in the fog - oh well.

The biggest problem I faced was when I formatted my harddrive and I forgot to backup the texture and opacity maps for the feathers!  In the end, I got something close to the original, but not as good.

Have fun everyone - can't wait until the next topic is posted!