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.

