TITLE: Treachery
NAME: Paul Potiki
COUNTRY: Australia
EMAIL: guanolad@hotkey.net.au
TOPIC: The Sea
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: trechery.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Lightwave 5.5

TOOLS USED: 
    Photoshop for textures

RENDER TIME: 
    11.5 min on Medium

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium III, 550 mhz, 32Mb Matrox G400



IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


I know what you're thinking: Perfect Storm. Well, no. I had this idea swimming
in my head long before the promo of Perfect Storm hit the screens. As a Fantasy
novel reader, scenes on the sea are very often part of the stories I read, so
this was my chance to render something of what I imagine during a good book.
The original idea was just to have a rough ocean, a solitary boat, and that's
it. But in creating the image, I quickly realised it needed more. I showed it
to a friend, and he suggested adding a few extra props - a bloodstain, a knife,
debris - and so I did just that. The end result is an image that tells a story,
the best kind of art there is.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


First step was the ocean. I had jiggered with a sea scene once before, where we
are inside the captain's cabin on a sailing ship, looking out onto the ocean
through vista windows. That was fine for distance, but this one was a close-up,
so I had to add in the waves myself. I tried to find an easy way to create
them, and I did, but they looked too geometric. So I added a second copy of the
ocean object and intersected them, to add a bit of randomness.

The surface of the sea was a huge success. I got some dark greeny blue in
Photoshop, and added swirls of white on another layer. Then used the diffuse
filter on the white, about 20 times, to randomize the edges and make them look
a little more like spume. Layering it on the surface of the sea was basic, but
I then did it a second time at different dimensions and opacity, which added
further randomness and depth. At first it didn't really seem to look right,
even with one of the layers having a bumpmap to add dimensionality, but then I
added the fog and it was transformed.

The rain is just a starfield object I use for space scenes, reduced in size,
animated, with motion blur. Worked really well.

The boat went through several incarnations. It's a sphere, quartered, and
stretched/distorted. Very very simple. Then a chunk was taken out to make it
hollow, and a seat added. My first go at it was fine for placement and testing,
but I soon realised that there was something wrong with how it was shaped.
After jiggering with it I narrowed the back end and sharpened the pointy end,
which helped. Further fine tuning included slimming the thickness of the edges,
and further narrowing the back end, then adding a mast and a rudder.

The knife is a very simple object, and not meant to be significant unless you
are looking for it. The bloodstain draws your eye to it. The oar further adds
to the story, which are all very basic objects. (I was going to include rope,
or some lines off the mast, but that seemed unneccesarily complex for what I
was trying to achieve)

The surface of the boat is flat with a wood texture greyed and with mid-opacity.
Almost all of the boat surfaces are the same image, but adjusted and coloured
to suit.

I hope there aren't too many images in this round that look like mine. That's
the risk of going for the simple route, sometimes...


