TITLE: First Contact
NAME: Marlo Steed
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: marlo.steed@uleth.ca
WEBPAGE: http://www.edu.uleth.ca/faculty/members/steed/MarloSteed.html
TOPIC: Ruins
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: contact.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    StudioPro 2.5.3

TOOLS USED: 
    StudioPro, Painter

RENDER TIME: 
    12 hours

HARDWARE USED: 
    Mac G3

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

It took me a while to come up with an idea but I wanted to communicate the idea
that ruins can be a future event.  Interwoven is the concept that some things
don't change.  Our world history is fraught with examples of individuals and
groups of people doing inhumane acts in the name of distrust and fear.  Today
in many parts of the world we see this problem reenacting itself over and over
again (Rwanda, Bosnia, etc.).  We are slow learners.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The modeling for this project was done entirely in Strata Studio Pro.  The
texures were created entirely from scratch in Painter with the exception of the
moons' textures.

The star field was created using a special affects module called Pixie Dust.  I
created three different pixie dust textures and then applied them to a
construction object and sprayed them in 360 degress with random size.  The
planets were created using two different aura affects to simulate an
atomosphere.  The nebula was created using the cloud module and modifying the
hue and density controls.

The moons used textures that were downloaded of NASA's site.  I wanted them to
look realistic so why not go to the source.  The sun was created using a
combination of two Hot Spot modules.  One with rays the other without.  These
were applied to sphere that had a fire texture.  The result is the affect of
the sun rays eminating from a glowing sphere.

The ship was the most involved part of this project.  The model was done with
metaballs.  I created an engine shape and then replicated it around the ship.

The textures were the tricky part.  I created the hull texture (color map, bump
map, added a purple specular color) in Painter.  I then also created a semi
transparent dirt texture to give the ship a slightly aged look (not quite off
the assembly line but not over aged in the stillness of space).  The logo and
symbols were stencil maps created in Painter and applied to the model.  The
blast affects were done in two ways.  I created a model of some interior
structure; walls that had been cut out with a stencil map, melted with a bump,
and then singed with another stencil map.  I then rendered that image and added
that to a color map as part of a stencil texture.  That is how the back blasts
were created.  The blast on the front part of the hull I did differently
because I wanted a better sense of the hull being ripped open.  In this
instance, I used a combination of a stencil map to create the burn marks and
transparency map to cut a hole in the hull.  I then imported my internal
structure model just beneach the hole in the hull.  Unfortunately the internal
structure was too small to see the detail that went into it.

The Observation deck was created using boolean substraction to cut out the
portal, and extrude to path to create the trim.  The text was created in
Painter and imported in as a texture.  The Xradian ship views were different
perspective renderings of the orgininal ship before being blasted.  These were
composited in Painter and imported as texture.  I spent a lot of time
experimenting with the spotlights.  I tryed making them volumeteric by adding a
mist but it spilled over in the alpha channel so I had to give up on that
idea.

The models were rendered out in 4 passes with alpha channels using Radiosity and
Raytracing then composited, I don't have enough memory to do all this in one
model.

