TITLE: The First Christmas
NAME: Guillermo Espitia Rojas
COUNTRY: Colombia
EMAIL: gespitia@latino.net.co
TOPIC: First Encounter
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT
JPGFILE: ge_first.jpg
ZIPFILE: ge_first.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Pov-Ray Windows 3.02


TOOLS USED: 
    Spatch (head, hands, leaves)
                  Helixir   (an adornment)
                  CorelDraw 5  (card, wallpaper)
                  Photopaint 5   (retouch gifs) 
                  3Dwin   (conversion head, hands and leaves to meshs)
                  Irfanview    (conversion tga to jpg)
                  Texture View


RENDER TIME: 
    12h 33m


HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 233 Mmx 32 Mb



IMAGEN DESCRIPTION:

My daughter Paola is 11 month old and this will be her first christmas.  At 
this image I did tried to reflect her expression and her reactions forehead to 
the tree of christmas.




DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 



1. ORGANIZATION OF THE SCENE

At the first time, I made a general portrayal general of the scene with 
primitives simulating the main objects.  With this general scheme I studied 
alternatives to be located the camera.  Once the alternatives were defined I 
determined than elements would appear into the scene and the degree of detail 
of the modeling.  Afterwards I defined the necessities of illumination of 
each of the alternatives. The following step consisted in to define the best 
alternative.  With this procedure I avoided to model elements that would not 
appear inside of the frame of the scene; in this way I saved time and I 
avoided to waste the resources of my computer. 
 
Latterly I divided the scene at four subscenes: the baby, the tree and its 
adornments, the illumination of the tree, and the gifts.  For each one I 
put a element common: the room. 
 
After the subescenas were combined at only one.  This process allowed to 
perform numerous render of test of short durability.


2.  BABY 

The head, the hair, the hands and the dress were modeled with Spatch. The 
output were done at format DXF, for afterwards to convert it to meshes with 
3Dwin.  The increase of the perfomance went very important to the change of 
patches to meshes. 
 
The eyes are a couple of spheres of Pov.  The lips, the eyebrows and the hair 
were modeled by separate to make easy the location of textures. 
 
The modeling of the head and the hands were performed with the tutorial of 
Anto Matkovic. This tutorial is one of the best  than I have seen in the 
Web, it is very concise but very complete.  
( http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/7415/ ).

The texture of the eyes is layered with pattern agate and wood.  The textures 
of the hair and of the dress was made with bumps.


3.  TREE 

At beginning, the leaf at form of needle of the tree was made with bicubic 
patch (7 points at Spatch).  At the tests of the tree, the 32 MB of Ram were 
not sufficients and after a long parse gave an error. 
 
Latterly I modeled the leaf at form of needle with major detail (13 points in 
Spatch).  The output did at format DXF and after it was converted to meshes 
with 3DWin.  At the tests, the time of render was very short (my first 
experience with meshes).


4.  ADORNMENTS

For the texture of the balls of christmas I did many tests with negative
results.  
Finally, I finished using something very single, a texture New Brass with 
modification of the color and the addition of reflection.  The texture of a 
ball was made with texture_map. 
 
The ball broken was made with textures only (I didn't make modeled of the 
edges broken).  The ball broken is composed of one difference (CSG) of 
two concentrics spheres.  The texture was made with texture_map, pattern 
onion, noise with sine_wave and a value of scale very accurate.  The 
textures of the two spheres are equal but with different colors. 
 
The socks of christmas are height-fields with image_maps.  The gifs were 
obtained at:
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/2132/Christmas. 
 
One of the adornments was made with the program Helixir. 


5.  ILLUMINATION
 
The illumination is very single: a main light, a rose light to highlight the 
face of the baby and lights for the bulbs.  At the bulbs I used soft halos.

 
6.  OTHERS

In the gifts I used single textures (pattern bozo and leopard), texture_maps 
(pattern gradient and agate) and image_maps.
 
The wallpaper and the card were drawed with Corel Draw. 
 
The texture of the cane was made with pattern spiral1. 


7.  GRATEFULNESS

During the creation of this image my wife Ligia  was always present with 
her suggestions and criticisms. I thank her for her patience and her valuable 
collaboration.

             **************************************



