TITLE: The Bridge of Khazad-dum
NAME: Raymond A. Salvatore
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: bonsalva@bellsouth.net
WEBPAGE: none
TOPIC: Fantasy
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: rasfanta.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Raydream Studio 5.5 raytracer

TOOLS USED: 
    Raydream Studio 5.5 and Micrografix Picture Publisher

RENDER TIME: 
    25 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    PENTIUM III 128 MEG RAM - HP PAVILION AND HP CAMERA

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    This was the last battle fought inside the mines of Moria, as
described by J.R.R. Tolkien's  THE LORD OF THE RINGS.   Gandalf and Aragorn,
along with the rest of the nine "walkers" had  made it past most of the traps
set by the orcs and had come down a  different flight of stairs than the orcs
had planned.  The orcs had  set a last obstacle of fire (ghash).  But their
plan failed and they ended up on the wrong side of the flames themselves. A
balrog appeared from out of one of the tunnels and crossed the flames with no
problem. The balrog was  immune to fire, being made of fire himself.  He
followed the  company across the bridge where Gandalf stood waitig to met him
in combat. His friends could only watch from the other side of the chasm. 
Gandalf's  sword shattered the balrog's sword into pieces.  Gandalf used his 
staff to  destroy the bridge under the balrog's feet. But as the  balrog fell
he swung his whip and caught Gandalf's legs and pulled the  wizard down into
the pit with him. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 
    I used the free form modeler to
extrude the long pieces that made up the columns. The chamber doors are made
from hollowed out spheres that are then cut up further via CCG intersection and
difference.  The balrog is mostly spheres, but his horns were made in the free
form modeler and his head was made with supermesh using a height field that I
drew from scratch in Picture Publisher.  I used shades of grey to sculpt half
of a face, then copied and pasted the reversed half on the other side to make a
symetrical head. This was formed into a sphere via super mesh.  Gandalf was
made of cones that were sent to the mesh modeler and deformed by pulling and
pushing vertices. There are eight light sources in the scene- more than I've
ever used before.  Most are just bulb lights tending towards blue or red.  One
is a spot light with grey light that's coming from outside the mine and
illuminating Gandalf.  I used the red lights to highlight the evil characters
and blue to wash the hero. The light sources were limited to illumine local
areas and fade out with distance.                

