TITLE: Town
NAME: Michael Hunter
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: intertek@one.net
WEBPAGE: http://www.interactivetechnologies.net
TOPIC: Opposites
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: town.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    3D Studio Max 8.0

TOOLS USED: 
    PhotoShop for some textures

RENDER TIME: 
    11m 10s

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium II 447 GHz 192 MB RAM


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

After doing that thing about Bill, I wanted to do something more light and free.
This one has a bunch of opposites in it. Light-dark, warm-cool, in-out,
wet-dry, travel by land (wagon) - travel by sea (boat), up-down... did I miss
any?


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

I didn't want to stick with the default laws of perspective. I wanted be free to
take liberties in order to be more expressive and show views that would be hard
to see at the same time otherwise. I did this by grabbing vertices and shoving
them about. Once in a while I had to remodel something because it couldn't
distort the way I wanted but most of the time it was easy enough.

The only technically hard part was getting the water to blend with the horizon
at one extreme and make nice splashy waves on the beach. On the beach side I
have 90% of the geometry so I could model the waves. Out in the distance I
simply reduced the opacity of the water so that at the most distant point it is
clear.

I painted the sky in PhotoShop, the water was done as a procedural map and the
uneven lighting on surfaces is actually something I added to the diffuse color
rather than a lighting effect.

The man holding the lantern is 3D but very minimal in poly count.