TITLE: Sunset
NAME: Marlo Steed
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: marlo.steed@uleth.ca
TOPIC: Surrealism
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: sunset.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Lightwave

TOOLS USED: 
    Lightwave

RENDER TIME: 
    3 days

HARDWARE USED: 
    Powerbook G4

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

I live on the prairies but within sight of the mountains.  The wind often cause
the clouds to bank up against the mountains in the west while the rest of the
sky is often clear.  I am often awed by the spectacular sunrises and sunsets
that this atmospheric phenomena creates.  This scene represents the landscape
and light that creates this stunning panoramic vista.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The objects themselves are not all that sophisticated in terms of modeling or
complexity.  The technically challenging part of the scene was actually the
volumetrics and the lighting - that took tons of tweaking.

The sun in the background was created from a sphere that was then subdivided and
then the polygons were extruded and and pulled out to create a spike sphere
then a number of transformations (twist, cyclone, magnet) were made to make it
look less symmetrical.  Then used procedural textures to get the mottled yellow
affect.

The matrix hubs and spikes on the top and bottom of the scene were created by
taking a simple primitive and beveling it in various ways and then cloning it. 
Again these were textured with numerous procedural textures.

The clouds were created using the points of the hubs as the basis for hypervoxel
clouds that surround each hub (3 different clouds for each point).

There are 6 lights in the scene.  Three of these were volumetric lights that
create the sun, the glow, and fog in the background (in front of the sun
object).  Then a standard 3 point light setup around the hub complex.

Finally the whole scene had a slight fog applied to it.