TITLE: Battle
NAME: Michael L. Marine
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: marine@ctc.com
WEBPAGE: None
TOPIC: Magic
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: mlmmagic.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    3D Studio MAX

TOOLS USED: 
    Blur Fire, BonesPro, Character Studio, Combustion, Digital Forest,
LenFX, Lightning, MAX:Surfaces, MetaReyes Metaballs, Particles+, Particle
Combustion, RealLensFlare and SuperGlow 3DS Plugins; and Photoshop 4.0

RENDER TIME: 
    Approximately 1 hour 40 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium Pro 200 w/ 96MB RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    The image depicts a battle between an evil wizard and his
troll guards against a sorceress and her dragon trying to save her friend from
being used as a sacrifice. 

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The final image was rendered as a 32 bit Targa image at 800 x 600 resolution
then converted to a JPEG format with Photoshop.  To storyboard, model, texture,
layout and light this scene took approximately 35 days to create at 4-6 hours a
day including all test renderings.  The final file size of the scene is 52MB. 
 
The ground plane is a quad patch with a fractal noise modifier added.  This was
then texture mapped with an image of Venus for the diffuse and a gray scale of
the image for bump.  These maps were then added to a blend material that used
the original maps as the base and a fractal noise map as a bump.
 
The Keep is a tube that has been booleaned for the crenellations, window
openings and doorway.  The creature heads on the Keep are from a model created
by Robert K. Sharo, and is freely available at the 3D Caf_ website
(http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/default.asp) and the Creator Studio website
(http://www.mediom.qc.ca/creator-studio/home.html).  The texture mapping for
the Keep is a multi-sub material with a rock pattern as the diffuse and bump
material base with numerous sub materials for coloring and fractal noise
procedurals used to eliminate any noticeable repeating of the base materials
tiling pattern.  Additionally, a volumetric light is used to illuminate the
inside.

The tree was created with the freeware Digital Forest plugin available at the 3D
Caf_ and textured with a wood grain procedural diffuse material and a bark
image bump map.

The Wizard was a free model of the month from Viewpoint Datalabs
(http://www.datalabs.com/indexb.html).  All the original textures that were
applied to the model were used.  The model was tessellated and had new
smoothing groups applied then re-posed.

The Sorceress is from the "Model Woman" collection and purchased from the Zygote
Media Group (http://www.zygote.com) with the gloves and boots from the female
Superhero in the "Living People" collection purchased from Digimation
(http://www.digimation.com) and created by Imagination Works.  She is textured
with a multi-sub material consisting of various diffuse, bump and
reflection/refraction maps.  The model was posed using the Character Studio
modules biped and physic. 

The Troll is from Viewpoint Datalabs and comes with the Character Studio plugin
for 3D Studio MAX. He is textured with a multi-sub material consisting of
various diffuse, bump and reflection/refraction maps. The model was posed using
the Character Studio modules biped and physic.  His club is a sphere scaled
along the xy axis with a fractal noise modifier added and textured with a wood
image diffuse map and a bark image bump map.

The girl prisoner crucified to the tree was purchased from Gary Oliverio who
created the model in Animation Master and 3D Studio R4.  The textures are the
original ones that came with the model.  Although the mesh is extremely
detailed in all other areas the feet were very simple elongated cone shapes.  I
replaced these with a copy of the feet from the original sorceress mesh.  The
model was posed using the BonesPro skeletal deformation plugin from
Digimation.

I created the Dragon (my first attempt at creating an organic model) using the
MetaReyes  Metaballs plugin for 3D Studio MAX and MAX's default modeling tools.
 The base for the model consists of a single skin mesh created from over three
hundred "Meta Muscles" and metaballs.  The small face size setting required to
achieve the level of detail I wanted in the model produced an extremely dense
mesh which then had an optimize modifier applied to it to lower the poly count.
 The nose horns, eyes, teeth, collar and chain are modified standard
primitives.  The neck frill is a modified star spline extruded with a level 3
mesh smooth modifier, two bend modifiers, a ripple modifier and a noise
modifier applied. The mesh is textured with a multi-sub material consisting of
numerous diffuse and bump maps. The model was posed using the BonesPro skeletal
deformation plugin.  This model took me about two weeks to model and texture.
If you have been daunted by creating organic models (like I have always been)
metaballs is an intuitive and reasonably easy way to accomplish the task.  Also
available is MetaMAX by Sandeep Shekar, a freeware metaballs plugin for 3D
Studio MAX that can be downloaded from the 3D Caf_.

The background for the image is a simple gradient environment map using the
Inshani Graphics MAX:Surfaces Stratus procedural map in the top gradient layer.
 Additional clouds were created over the wizard to add depth to the background
using the standard Combustion plugin.

The sorceress's fireballs were created using Blur Fire (free from Blur Studios,
their modified version of the standard combustion plugin), particles+ and
particle combustion (both free from Peter Watje of Spectral Imaging).  The
particle system also has a Cebas Computer's RealLensFlare video post (available
at http://www.trinity3d.com) glow filter applied.

The wizard's aura is a LenzFX glow video post filter and his lightning storm
shield spell consists of three lightning helpers applied to three dummy objects
the hood of his cape and a helix spline around his body.  The lightning then
has an object channel set with a Super Glow (free from 3D Caf_ and other
sources) video post filter applied to that object channel.

The radiant star/sun is a LenzFX video post filter with no lens reflections set
and only glow and ray settings.

The main lighting for the scene consists of a directional light with overshoot
set to simulate the ambient light from the sun and uses ray traced shadows (not
shadow maps). In conjunction a target spot, aligned with the directional light,
is used that has its fall off set to the same area size as the ground plane
using ray traced shadows and excluding the ground plane surface from
illumination.  Target spots are also set behind the Keep, troll and tree to
enhance the definition of the shadows cast by those objects.  These three spots
exclude all objects from illumination and only cast shadows.  Additionally,
seven omni lights set to various colors are used to add accents in the scene
such as the yellow highlights on the Dragon's head from the sorceress's
fireball.

Adobe Photoshop 4.0 was used to add my name and date to the image and convert it
to a JPEG format.

