TITLE: An Ancient Crater
NAME: Luis Valoyes
COUNTRY: Colombia
EMAIL: luisvaloyes@malditasea.zzn.com
WEBPAGE: http://sitio.de/luisvaloyes/
TOPIC: The Wilderness
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: crater.jpg
ZIPFILE: crater.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    SoftCAD.3D Lite 1.16

TOOLS USED: 
    HexaGreat-3D 5.25, SoftCAD.3D Lite 1.16 (both freeware), Corel Photo
House 1.0

RENDER TIME: 
    37 min.

HARDWARE USED: 
    AMD K6 MMX, 32 Mb RAM, running Windows 98

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

 This image presents an interior view of an ancient crater which 
 has became a small lagoon that is now the home of various creatures
 like the two fishes in the image. It shows that those environments
 that the human being avoid can be perfect for other creatures and that
 life is stronger than everything else.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

 This image is my first "artistic" 3d work, and it's very simple really. The
final scene
 contains only five(5) different objects with just a few polygons each one, so
it didn't
 take a long time to render. 
 
 1. OBJECT MODELLING: The 3 stones and the 2 fishes were modelled using
HexaGreat-3D,
                      drawing each model polygon-by-polygon, it took just 1 and
1/2 or 
                      2 hours to draw all the models, I even modelled 4 or 5
more objects
                      that I finally did not use. Then I exported the models as
.dxf files.
 2. SCENE COMPOSITION: The scene was created using SoftCAD.3D. All the .dxf
models were 
                       imported as library objects, and I assigned textures to
each one.
                       The crater was modelled by placing together various
copies of the
                       same big stone. The floor of the crater was made simply
drawing a
                       square and assingning it a texture. After that I placed
the other
                       two kinds of stones on the floor, even placing one over
another trying
                       to have some stones that were half over the water level.
The red
                       fish was placed right over the floor, and the other one
was placed 
                       over a box that I deleted after, so they swim at
different deeps.
                       The water is just a box with a water texture which is 65%
transparent.
                       The sun position was adjusted to get the reflection
effect on the
                       water. I expected that the fishes had any reflection too
but the water
                       was not transparent enough. I also placed some stones
over the surfaces
                       of those that formed the crater because it was very
obvious that it
                       was the same stone over and over again.
 3. RAYTRACING: The image was generated by the SoftCAD.3D built-in raytracer,
using 90_
                smoothing and 24 bit anti-aliasing. I use 16 bit color
resolution and a
                800 x 600 screen resolution. Whitout the water it took 15 or 16
minutes to
                render, so the water reflection effect added the other 21
minutes. The
                raytraced image was exported as a .bmp file, and I used Corel
Photo House to
                add the title and credit, and to convert it into .jpg format.

 The source files include the .dxf models without any texture. I give them just
to let you 
 see how simple they are. I do not provide the complete scene because the
resultant .dxf
 file would be really big.

 Note: I really do not remember the web address to download HexaGreat-3D, so if
you do not
       find it on the net, you can e-mail me and I'll try to send it tou you,
it's just a
       336 Kb .zip file. / You can download SoftCAD.3D Lite 1.16 for free at:
       http://www.softcad.com.