TITLE: A Thorny Tail
NAME: Steve Schaneville
COUNTRY: USA (Louisiana)


EMAIL: schaneville@hotmail.com
TOPIC: Adventure
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: thorny.mpg
ZIPFILE: thorny.zip
RENDERER USED: 

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     Mental Ray 3.1


TOOLS USED: 

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     Softimage|XSI 2.01
     Photoshop
     avi2mpg


CREATION TIME: 

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     1 month (a few hours) -- idea development
     1 month (30 hours?)   -- modeling and texturing
     1 month (50 hours?)   -- animating
     3 days  (72 hours?)   -- rendering
     3 hours               -- compositing
     

HARDWARE USED: 

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     Athlon 1700+ XP (256 MB)  -- modeling, texturing, animating, and rendering
     Dual Pentium 450 (192 MB) -- rendering



ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 

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     A snake gets frustrated with a cactus when he bumps the cactus while 
     waking up.  Little does he know, the cactus doesn't care much for
     his taunting...
     


VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 

-----------------------
     Take note, there is a problem with the shadows, but it is too late for me
     to re-render now.  There are also a few other glitches that you'll 
     notice... sorry 'bout that.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 

---------------------------------------------
     I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to use Softimage|XSI, a full 
     blown professional animation package.  It was a real treat, and I learned 
     tons about animation in general.  
     
     Every model and texture was created specifically for this animation.  All
     textures were painted from scratch in photoshop, except for the landscape
     ground and sky textures, which were taken from random pictures off the web

     and edited as needed.
     
     
Snake
-----
     Modeling:  the snake is made of subdivision surfaces.  The thorns at the
                end of the animation were created with XSI's hair module.
     Texturing: 3 color maps for the color
                2 bump maps for the scales
                1 specular map for the scales
     Animating: the snake is deformed by a spline.  The spline is controlled
                by 6 control cubes along the length of the snake.  The cubes
                are attached to 3 spline points each, so that moving and 
                rotating the control cubes controls that general location of 
                the snake.  In addition, the snake's head is deformed by 2 
                skeleton bones.  The bones are linked to several sliders
                allowing for various rotations of the head and for opening and
                closing the mouth.  Regular key-framing was used on all
                controls.
                
Cactus
------
     Modeling:  the cactus' surface is made of subdivision surfaces, and is
                smooth (i.e. does not include the "ripples" seen in the
                animation).  The ripples were created by painting a 
                displacement map in photoshop and wrapping it around the
                cactus.  The thorns that cover the cactus are made from 
                the XSI hair module.  
     Texturing: 1 displacement map for the cactus "ripples".
                2 procedural textures for the cactus surface.
                1 procedural texture for the thorns.
     Animating: the cactus' arms are each deformed by a skeleton chain.  The
                main truck is deformed very similarly to the way the snake
                is controlled, but there is only one control cube at the top
                of the cactus and the bottom is fixed to the ground.  Regular 
                key-framing was used on all controls.

Clock
-----
     Modeling:  made of booleans and primatives.
     Texturing: several straight colors were applied to the various clock 
                components, and a picture of a pocket watch was applied 
                to the clock face.
     Animating: keyframing was used for the clock movement and the ringing 
                bell.  Expressions applied to the clock's rotation were used
                to make the clock shake while it is ringing.

Environment
-----------
     Modeling:  straight polygonal modeling was used for mountain and rock
                elements.  The main ground was deformed with a displacement
                weight map.  The sky is a simple sphere with the normals 
                pointing inward.
     Texturing: 1 color map for each element was used.
                1 bump map for each element was used, but bump map rendering
                     was turned off for the final render because it wasn't
                     going to finish before the deadline.
     Animating: No animation... only camera movement.
     Notes:     I really would have liked to have added some plants and 
                grassy areas to this animation, but simply ran out of time.
     
Compositing
-----------
     Instead of rendering out everything in a single swoop, I opted to render
     out all 3000 frames in 5 passes (for a total of 15000 files).  4 passes
     included single objects: 1) the snake only, 2) the cactus only, 3) the
     environment, and 4) the clock only.  The fifth pass was a shadows-only 
     pass for all objects. I then composited them back together with the XSI 
     internal compositer.  The output in the end is identical to what the 
     renderer would have output if it was done all at once, with two 
     exceptions: 1) the shadow pass was blurred before compositing, giving
     psuedo soft shadows without having to use area lights (saving time), and
     2) to do the transitional "wipe" near the end of the animation.

     The other reason I rendered in passes is because it helps speed up render
     times... the renderer doesn't have so much information to deal with 
     all at one time, and my computer didn't have enough memory to handle
     all the polygons at once anyway.


Zip File
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     The zip file includes the scene file created in XSI (version 2.01) and 
     all picture files created in photoshop (some of the photoshop files are 
     in jpg format rather than psd format to help save space).


     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

