TITLE: Sicilian Opening
NAME: Thomas Efer
COUNTRY: Germany
EMAIL: eferonline@gmail.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.thomasefer.de
TOPIC: Absence
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: techess.jpg
ZIPFILE: techess.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Cinema 4D 6 CE

TOOLS USED: 
    PhotoImpact, C4D Shader Plugins AmbientOcclusion, bhodiNUT Fresnel,
Dookie's - Grid

RENDER TIME: 
    15 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    AMD Turion64 Mobile, 1,8 GHz


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


* warning no native speaker * ;-)

Thinking about the topic I decided relatively early that the one thing missing
should be
an essentially important part of a greater thing displayed. This way the viewer
can
easily figure out the odd part. Something like an obviously missing gearwheel in
a
machine seemed best.

After several other ideas I finally came up with creating a chess board with one
King
figure missing. The free space is easily recognizable and besides all
topic-related
reasons, creating a chess board has always been on my 3D-to-do-list. The problem
was
then only to create the story behind the King's absence.

And the solution came - as often - by suddenly encountering a clich_-ridden
pun:

The term "Sicilian Opening" inspired me to let the King be dead - murdered.
Stabbed in cold blood. Just before the game started. Thanks for viewing.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


I fear that I would bore most of the 3D artists around here to death telling how
to
create chess figures. If you have no idea how this can be accomplished, just
search the
Internet for some tutorials - I am sure you will find a proper guide - even for
your
particular 3D application.

To keep it really short: The figures are splines, rotated around an axis by
using a
Lathe-NURBS object. Every here and there some parts needed to be cut out. A
perfect way
for "woodworking" like this is to use a "Boolean" tool for Constructive Solid
Geometry (CSG)

The problem with this method was that the head of the horse is absolutely not
symmetrical
to any axis. Therefore I decided to use some splines and the Loft-NURBS-object.

I included a wireframe view in the zip-file for a detailed view. I chose this
quite
strange modelling method to have a perfectly axial symmetrical lower part of the
figure
seamlessly transitioned into the head - important for using glass materials.

One last thing to mention: The materials are mainly built without using any
image maps
(the only exception is the chess box - it's mapped with a prior render of the
chess board
plus some game-box-styled 2d-elements)

If anyone should be interested in materials or objects used her - or the whole
scene:
I give it away for free - which means at no costs and with no* limits
(* the only limit is mentioning me somewhere as source - in small letters)

Just contact me and I will send you the files you wish in the format you
desire.

Oh, one very last thing: My Version of C4D prohibits me from "final-rendering"
larger than
640x480. Nonteheless preview-rendering followed by  screen-capturing are a
completely legal
workaround for this. If you would like to see the image rendered in another
(non-widescreen)
format, then please contact me. I will find a way rendering 4:3 in a reasonable
resolution.