TITLE: Woman Considering a Minimalist Portrait NAME: Douglas Eichenberg COUNTRY: USA EMAIL: douge@nls.net WEBPAGE: www.getinfo.net/douge TOPIC: Minimalism COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: de_min.jpg RENDERER USED: 3DS Max 6.0 TOOLS USED: Photoshop, AutoCAD, XFrog, Poser, Deep Exploration RENDER TIME: ~5 hours HARDWARE USED: P4 2GHz IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A woman contemplating a minimalist portrait. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Originally, I started with a photo of myself and wrote a script to convert it into a mosaic and generate differently textured cubes for each block. I then found that it was too much work to manipulate the textures, since each cube had a unique texture applied to it, so I created a single box and applied the mosaic as an image map. I created the illusion of many smaller cubes with a bump map (actually 2 bump maps in a mix map). I used a standard 3ds Max metal shader for the material and applied a bitmap inside a raytraced map for the reflections. Besides being necessary for a metallic texture, the reflection map also served another purpose: it created more definition where the eyes, nose, and mouth should be. If you squint a little you can just make out where they are. The actual photo I used is on my website. I envisioned the object as a minimalist self-portrait created with 3 inch colored aluminum cubes. An actual version of it would weigh about 60 pounds (27.2 kg). The walls are simple UV-mapped CSG boxes. The material uses a mix map in the diffuse channel to put some stains and discoloration in, and a matching bump map and specular map to create the highlights. The wood material in the floor, stairs, and runners is done in much the same way, but it also uses a falloff map in the reflection slot. The runners are extruded splines. The plants were created in XFrog and imported into Max for texturing. The vases are UV-mapped, revolved splines with numerous maps applied. The chains on the hanging plant were made in AutoCAD and imported as a .3ds mesh. The railings are uv-mapped, revolved splines. The rug is a UV-mapped rectangle. It was subdivided and an FFD modifier was applied to it so the wrinkles could be added in. The fringe on the rug is shag hair. The texture map was pulled off the internet. The woman, her hair, and her clothing were done in Poser, output as .obj files, and converted into max format with Deep Exploration. The light beams are directional lights with a volume light modifier added to them and colored attenuation.