TITLE: Adams' winter work
NAME: Pascal Olice
EMAIL: p.olice@free.fr
WEBPAGE: http://www.oli3d.com
TOPIC: Spectacular landscapes
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: winter.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Vue d'Esprit

TOOLS USED: 
    Poser, Paint Shop Pro

RENDER TIME: 
    2 hours

HARDWARE USED: 
    P4, 800MHz, 256MB RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

Topic immediately raised the idea of Ansel Adams, perhaps the best (and
certainly the most famous) photographer of American lanscapes. The image is
based on one of Adams' best-known pictures: Clearing Winter Storm, shot in the
1940s in Yosemite.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The first challenge was to get the lanscape right. I downloaded hi-res USGS
files of Yosemite, which I had to stich together with 3Dem (freeware). I then
had to go through a lenghty trial-and-error process to position my camera where
Adams' had been 60 years ago.
Second challenge was the forest. There are over 10,000 trees in the image.
Because of this, I could not use Vue d'Esprit's stock trees (which, beside did
not contain the appropriate fir tree). So I downloaded a fir tree profile from
the net, processed it in Paint Shop Pro, and derived five slightly different
clip planes from it. I then used Vue d'Esprit's cloning and scattering
functions to position them in the scene.
Next difficulty were the clouds. They are represented as cloud spheres, which is
the best approximation I managed so far for clouds. Unfortunately, they still
look quite flat. If anybody knows of a better way, please drop a line...
Finally, lighting was inspired by Adams' techniques of (artificially) exposing
various parts of the image with different parameters. Here, the key light is
not very powerful, and most lighting is provided by spotlights on chosen parts
of the scene, plus liminescence from selected textures (snow, clouds and
trees).
So sorry I am still so far of Adams' picture, but this was a very interesting
exercise in photorealism.