TITLE: "Taming the Dragon"
NAME: Caroline Prenoveau
COUNTRY: Canada (Quebec)
EMAIL: Virtualmint@hotmail.com
TOPIC: Spirit of Asia
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: ttdragon.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Blender 2.22

TOOLS USED: 
    Paint Shop Pro 6 (gamma and saturation correction)

RENDER TIME: 
    10 min 13 sec

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 2 (450 mhz)


IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

        Well, it's a strange blue manga girl named Vikeena trying to tame a wild
dragon.  The dragon (named Gnylf) seems a little reluctant but he will not
resist very long to the charm and the gentleness of his future master.  And I
feel it's not the first time they meet, because, in a certain way, they seem to
know each other...  Taming a dragon is hard and it takes time, it can't be done
in just one day.  But when you success, it's so cool because you get a good
mount and also a friend to take you everywhere you want to go by the way of the
sky.  (I want a dragon too!! :)
 

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


First, I did the two characters.

        I modeled the manga girl using a tutorial for 3d studio max I found on
http://www.comet-cartoons.com/toons/.  It was not easy and needed a lot of
twiking but I think it ended up pretty well.  After, I added the clothing and
the texturing.  It was not too hard, just very long... (I hate UV mapping!). 
The most difficult part was surely the hair (I did it using a tutorial on the
same page I mentioned previously).
        Then, I did the dragon.  I started with a cube (like for the girl) and,
subdivision after subdivision, it started to look like a dragon.  It didn't
take me so long, but I spent a lot of time on the texture (yeah, with the UV
mapping system again!).
        And both of my characters are fully "ikatised" and animable (except for
the faces, too hard to animate in meshes...).  So I positioned them and ajusted
the lighting and the camera.
(I did the textures for the eyes of the girl, the symbols in her face, her hair,
etc with Paint Shop Pro 6 and I found all the other textures on
http://www.3dcafe.com/ and http://www.stormvision.net/)

Then, I did the landscape (this was the boring part so I will not talk very much
about it).

        Some people may ask me how I did the grass.  Well, it was just pure and
simple "cheating".  First of all, it is made with meshes (which means a lot of
vertices!).  I did a small tuft of grass in mesh which I dupliframed on a curve
twisted like spaghetti.  It did a bigger tuft.  Then, all I had to do was to
duplicate this tuft and spread it anywhere I wanted on the ground.  Stupid,
simple, no headache :)  (I tried with particules but the result was not what I
wanted...)
        Also, I had troubles with the leaves (they were so undisciplined!) and
with the mountains...  But I'm happy with the result, it's not so bad.

Finally, making this picture was a great deal of fun for me, and I hope watching
it will bring you a little bit of this happiness ;)
      

