Jump up in hierarchy.
Some of the work posted here is a series of variations on logo presentation.
in most cases, the logo used is that of
Low-Key Cycling Events
or individual events put on by the organization. Another logo example
is WSSG, a business group within the Semiconductor Products Sector
of Motorola, for whom I work.
In chronological order, the available images are the following. Most
are JPEG-encoded at 640 by 400 pixel resolution with file sizes between
50 and 120 kilobytes. Of course, JPEG encoding is best viewed with
24-bit color.
- WSSG #1 : This is the first real scene I did.
Despite being one of the quickest and easiest, it is one of my
favorites. I just slapped a pre-fab model of a space station
(see
http://www.viewpoint.com/tools/raydream/
) onto an Earth-photo backdrop and added a quick text object and
set the light source to sort-of line up with the sun source.
This one also looks good animated.
- Low-Key Cube : This is a frame extracted
from an animation of a spinning crystal cube with flying text, a
promotion for Low-Key Events. The result was slightly disappointing,
looking more "plastic" than I wanted. This was likely the result
of failing to fine-tune the settings. The original version of
this animation was rendered in the Crystal Graphics tool.
- Whirlpool : The sea was rendered on
an analytic pseudosingularity of the form K/|r + epsilon|. A model
of an oil tanker was slapped in the water, as was floating text.
The primary issue with this image was the specification of the parametric
representation of the water surface in an axially symmetric form, to
avoid Cartesian artifacts. The water texture was uninspired, I am
afraid.
- Spiral : This image was probably inspired
by Byte Magazine covers from the early 1980's. This was my first shot
at the Ray Dream Free-Form Modeler. The maze was implemented as
two extruded shapes (each a series of rectangular cross-sections
extruded in a quasi-semicircle) and rendered with a "cinder block"
texture. The Low-Key text was rendered with a brick texture colored
appropriately. The Viking ship was a pre-fabricated model provided
by MetaCreations. The water was again rather uninspired.
- Maze : This was an attempt to simulate
a computer maze game -- rendering the inside of a Dungeons and Dragons
type environment. There was some difficulty getting the texture
mapping to work out as desired -- note the lack of registration of
the wall tiles, and the failure of the tiles to map around the
corner of the wall on the left. One thing about Ray Dream is
that scaled objects don't texture correctly -- the free-form modeler
should instead be used to directly generate shapes at final scale.
I think parametric mapping to a free-form extruded wall set would
have produced superior results. The head was a Metacreations
mesh model ("bald head"), textured with "mercury blobs". The flame
was done with the Ray Dream fire generator (not the Four Elements
version). The bowl was generated with a formula model, textured
with "polished gold" slightly modified.
- Arch : The arch was rendered using the
free-form modeler. The hole in the wall was generated using a
Boolean cut. The snowfield was implemented as a backdrop
of a Vue d'Esprit rendering of a snow-textured fractal
terrain field. The penguin is a Metacreations object dropped
in place. The font is by
Dan
Smith.
- Stairs :
This is a self-indulgence into two of the most overused
themes in 3-d rendering -- spiral staircases and checkerboard
floors. This scene has recently been re-rendered to improve
on the version previously listed here.
- Heart :
This image was a play on the fact that the Pinnacles Enduro
ride is on Valentine's Day in 1998. The backdrop is
from Vue d'Esprit. The bike is a GIF from the
Kestrel USA.
It was applied to a think layer, with a silhouette from
the image used as a transparency mask. The window was
rendered as two extrusions -- one for the frame, and another
for the stencil used to Boolean-subtracts a hole in the wall.
The curtain was extruded. I was responsible for all 3-d
objects in this scene, which made it more satisfying.
I really like the result.
- Road :
This was inspired by my bike-commute to work, when I looked
down at my shadow (I was late, so the sun was actually up...).
The shadow is of Marco
Pantani.
- Shelf :
This was an attempt at rendering an internally-lighted trophy
case. Given the simplicity of the scene, I was quite pleased
with the result. However, given the large number of transparent
objects and the numerous light sources, it took a substantial
amount of time to render.
- Ice :
This was another satisfying result.... the bridge was originally
designed for incorporation into Bryce 3d, but difficulties
I had getting the package to work well convinced me to render
it in a Ray Dream scene instead. The textures are from the Ray
Dream CD, as is the model of the ship. The bridge I did on
my own. Unfortunately, before I could address the aliasing effects
on the bridge, the program terminated during a save operation,
after the previous version was deleted but before the new one
was written. Ouch! I later recovered the original with
Norton UnErase, but it awaits updating.
Still, this version isn't too bad.
- Velodrome :
HPVs offer substantial simplicity relative to standard bicycles,
as well as offering a nice surface for light reflection, etc.
The track surface is a simple extrusions -- attempts to use
analytic functions proved frustrating. This is the third version
of this image posted here -- the most notable change to the
latest revision is the reflective windshields.
- Framed Picture :
This one is based on a hallway at Motorola Semiconductor in
Austin, except I took extreme liberties with the view :).
The view was rendered in Vue d'Esprit
(full image is available).
The only interaction between Ray Dream and the scenery was
via the placement of a distant light source in the approximate
sun location. This version was updated 04 Mar 1998, and
contains substantial additions from previous versions.
- Capture the Night (moon.jpg):
21 Mar 1998:
The Moon and Earth are
photographs mapped over the sphere (using a cubic mapping).
The stars and water textures were generated using Vue d'Esprit's
functional texture generator, the former rendered as clouds
within Vue and used as a backdrop in Ray Dream. The star density
was increased in PaintShop Pro by pasting transformed copies
of the star field on top of itself.
- Escape the Night (spaceship.jpg):
23 Mar 1998:
This project, done to give me something productive to do during
the Stanford-URI NCCA basketball quarterfinal,
is a somewhat failed experiment in the Night theme for
the Internet Ray Trace Competition for April 1998.
In the scene, the Sun is
not having a good day. Three RAM jet spacecraft escape from the
doomed Earth, which is visible in the background. The jet intakes
are shielded with gas-permeable screens. Note detachable fuel tanks
for low-velocity transport are still in place. The backdrop
wasn't rendered but was downloaded from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope
image archive... it includes some clear imperfections, but is
still striking.
Click on thumbnail to view larger image:
djconnel@flash.net
