TITLE: Goblins
NAME: Jean-Michel Grimaldi
COUNTRY: France
EMAIL: grimalj2@cti.ecp.fr
TOPIC: Horror
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: goblins.jpg
ZIPFILE: goblins.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray for Windows (3.1g)


TOOLS USED: 

 POV-Ray for Windows (text editor),
 Photoshop (height-fields),
 IrfanView (conversion tga-jpg)

RENDER TIME: 

 3h 29m 5s (with AA 0.3)

HARDWARE USED: 

 P90 24MB for the modeling,
 then Celeron 400 64MB for textures and lighting.


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

* ENGLISH
The noise of your steps reverberates in a sticky darkness. It has been hours
since your lamp went dark, hours you have been walking for, alone, in the
obscurity...but far off, you perceive something like a buzz, and a dim light
soon stands out, high in the rock. You climb the wall and come to some sort of
a
tunnel snaking into the mountain. Suddenly, above you, an exit! You clear it at
one jump and there, you stay petrified with terror: two fiendish creatures,
with
an oily skin, are giving you a piercing look and slowly lift their weapons...
"Welcome to Goblins Inc., mister. Can we be of some help to you?"

* FRENCH
Vos pas r_sonnent dans une obscurit_ moite. Voil_ des heures que votre lampe ne
fonctionne plus, des heures que vous marchez, seul, dans le noir...mais au
loin,
vous percevez comme un bourdonnement, et bient_t une faible lueur se dessine,
haut dans la roche. Vous escaladez la paroi pour arriver _ une sorte de tunnel
serpentant dans la montagne. Soudain, au-dessus de vous, une issue! D'un bond
vous la franchissez et l_, vous restez p_trifi_ d'horreur: deux cr_atures
d_moniaques, _ la peau huileuse, vous transpercent du regard et soul_vent
lentement leurs armes... "Welcome to Goblins Inc., mister. Can we be of some
help to you ?"


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

** CONCEPT
When I went to the IRTC site, I had to choose between 'Landmarks' and 'Horror'.
I had much  more ideas for the second topic, so I made some sketches on paper.
Among them was a little goblin in an open window, with a storm behind, by
night.
But it would have been difficult to see the face with the light coming from
behind, and the lighting would not have been very realistic. So I thought it
would be better in a dark dungeon, with some torches... Anyway I first had to
make the goblin. I did it, then I made the background, where I put my goblin
after some scaling. Then I added the signature and the 'guest'in his hole. I
made the angle on the right and rounded the corners (even for the guest's hole)
to make the stone look more 'carved'. At this moment, the camera found its
final
position. I thought the picture was a bit empty, so I added some kind of a
water
creature, like in the movie 'Abyss', on the right. It was absurd and very long
to calculate, so I removed it (I can give you the file if you want). I made a
second character, with different proportions and clothes. Then I felt the
picture missed some more humor, so I chose the door would be an elevator, and
that (humorous) notices would fill the blank on the wall. Then I set the
textures and the lighting, and adjusted some details (nerve on the biceps of
the
goblins, size of the signature, green fog on the ground). Finally I made the
ground, and adjusted the 'distance' of the fog.

** MODELING (all hand-coded)
* little goblin:
- The face: the important point is that I define only one half, then mirror it
and put it on the other side (there is even a 'double' tooth: the centered
one).
- The hat: it is made with a loop, the basic shape being extruded and scaled
along a path.
- The fur ball: just made with many many cones. I added randomness in order to
avoid 'patterns', and tried to find a natural direction. I tried with
triangles,
but there was a problem when they pointed at the camera, so I put cones.
- The arms: One of the most difficult parts. As for the face, I made each
object
one after another, keeping in mind the global object I wanted to create. Also I
made some sketches on paper to facilitate this. All the angles are 'relative'
angles, because it allowed me to make more natural positions.
- The axe: The object itself was not very difficult to model (though note the
textured CSG for the blade), but it was very hard to place it, ie to align the
two hands (especially because I had chosen to use relative angles). Here is
what
I did: I modified the hand object, adding a long cylinder in it, then I played
around with the angles of the arms in order to have the two cylinders making
just one. When this was (almost) achieved, I removed the cylinders and put the
axe in the most visible hand.
* The tall character: I modified the size and position of the different
elements, but the body has the same structure. Though the equipment is totally
original: the horns are (again) made with loops (a path of spheres smoothen
with
cylinders); the collar is a torus clipped by a plane, the sword is another CSG,
and the feet are the same for the two characters. Concerning the body, note
that
I added a neck. I also had a problem with the torch, because it would have been
difficult to track its exact position. So I made the flame separatly, then
positioned it precisely with different orthographic views. Note that the torch
has been scaled so that it has the same size as the ones on the wall.
* The background: I will not describe everything. But note the directional
turbulence in media to make the flame look more realistic. Also there is a
little macro to make the bars on the door, and the handle. The stones around
this door are randomly scaled, but they have alternate sizes. The notices on
the right are height-fields, and the texture for the text is due to boxes I put
inside. Concerning the buttons, the arrows are made with triangles. Finally I
used media to simulate light, and another textured CSG for the floor number.
* About this background, note that the stones around the door are declared
after
the fur ball. Thus, as I was pleased with the way they were scaled and did not
want to change it, I had to parse the fur ball every time I wanted to make an
adjustment  concerning, for example, the buttons.
* The ground: I made an orthographic view of the floor with the interesting
elements (ground.pov). Then I retouched it: I copied the steps to make
footprints, added trails coming from the door, and adjusted the 'contacts',
especially with the wall.

** LIGHTS
* This part was very very long: the light of the torches could not give light
to the whole scene, so I tried to add shadowless lights. But these give no
hotspots. Finally, there is a distance falloff for the torches, and two
'artificial' lights behind the camera. And I think the shadows these lights
make
are actually a good point. I also learned that ambient light is very important:
with a value of .1 or .2, the black will stay black, but the overall aspect
will
be very different.
* Note that the light is colored to make it look more like fire light.
* Don't make your images with a notebook: after having made the scene on one of
those (I was on holiday), I was rather pleased with the lighting. But when I
saw
it on my PC...I had to forget all the work I had done and set new lights.

** TEXTURES
* They were also very long to make, and not only because I had to re-make them
all when I left the notebook (what's more, I had to make new textures then, but
on a very old screen, which was a bit red and had bad brightness/contrast;
after
having changed it, I had to make new textures again :).
* I have slightly colored lights, but I made the textures with grey lights, so
the colored lights really give the desired effect.
* Here's my method to build a texture :
 1. Adjust the parameters in a basic scene with a sphere and a plane ;
 2. Put the texture in your scene ;
 3. Adjust again because the light is probably different.
* There is directional turbulence on the torches. Also, since the media did not
colored them, I had to add a layer to simulate this, with directional
turbulence
too (but less).
* Note the link texture on the tunic of the tall goblin: marble texture map
with
marble normal maps. Also note that it was quite hard to adjust the size of the
dents on the sword.
* Do you see how normal gives much more realism to your textures (try to
remove it)?

** INVISIBLE DETAILS
* The sword has a wooden handle with a golden sphere.
* The torches are the same object, but randomly rotated so that you see
different things.
* I translated the texture on the wall because there was a little artifact
(black pixels) somewhere (you can remove the translate if you want to see it:
between the door and the right torch).
* There is a little marble normal on the axe, with some turbulence to avoid
patterns.
* There is a black fog so that if you raise gamma, the background on the right
stays black.
* There is a correct hole in the wall for the lift, so that if you raise gamma,
you see correct shadows in it (ie hardly any shadow).
* The guest has a black head so that there is no fog between his two eyes.
* ... (did you notice the nerve on the biceps ?)

Jean-Michel Grimaldi