TITLE: encyclopedia
NAME: Sammy Fischer
COUNTRY: France
EMAIL: sammyf@wanadoo.fr
WEBPAGE: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/sammyf
TOPIC: Old Technology
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: sf_encyc.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Maxon Cinema 4D XL

TOOLS USED: 
    Corel Photopaint

RENDER TIME: 
    around 20'' at 1152x864 ( forgot to write it down)

HARDWARE USED: 
    Athlon XP 1700+, 512 MB RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


most of the description is written in the image anyway. just a small fact :
strangely, in the future, information will still be saved in one of the oldest
storage technology : books (even though I would love to have a book with an
holografic display like this;)


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

hmm ... this is once again one of those 'technically quite uninteresting'
entries. Anyway : 

* the high render time is due to surface shadows. Notice how the shadow of the
robot legs are hard near the beginning and get softer with distance. Normally I
don't use them, as they tend to use huge amount of times. Hmm .. one leg of the
robot is up by design. It is supposed ot be moving.

* the holographic CD is made of three different rings. Although I could have
used different textures on the same disc, I thought it looked better like this.
I applied a vertically increasing  alpha channel to all three discs to make the
point that it ISN'T ACTUALLY THERE. Note also, that it has a front and
backside. In the first test renderings, I had the front side showing, with a CD
label and colourfull pictures, but then realized, that the interesting aspect
of a CD in such a book, would be the backside. You can still see parts of the
picture as a reflection in the book and showing through the reflective layer
though. (it's a picture the from Bubble-Gum Crisis Collector DVD edition;)

* the nano-robot is entirely made of primitives. it was an afterthought anyway.

* the vertical glowing of the holographic display is a volumetric light with a
texture. I didn't want it to start throwing light everywhere. so it's not
emiting any light at all.

* the green glowing around the holographic display is probably the single most
interesting thing in the whole picture (don't expect anything spectacular
though;) : as C4D is unable to render glowing textures behind objects, even if
they have a 100% transparent alpha channel (glow is postprocessed, and the map
for the post-process doesn't differentiate between textures:\, I had to
prerender a glowing box, and then apply it as a self-illumination texture.
Works ok for the most parts. If you didn't notice any artifacts yet ... well
... please don't search ;)

* The book ... well ... boxes, stuff ... you get the picture. nothing really
fancy.

* the table is a ground object (I told you it was technically rather
uninteresting, didn't I?;)

* the text is mine, and this is my text ... by Anne Elk (that's A.N.N.E. Elk,
not An Elk) .. sorry ... old Monty Python Joke. And it's not really true
anyway. the boxed content is from http://www.karbosguide.com and is the only
part you should believe. The rest might contain errors (especially in the later
parts;). Hmm ... there is actually ONE information that is really valid : CDs
don't survive near seacoasts. After 3-4 weeks, the reflective layer has been
destroyed in many places (my brother who builds sailboats said it was due to a
bacteria which also damages the paint on boat-hulls). the only solution I found
was to have a climatised room or to put the CDs and DVDs in the fridge. ('so
... what are we going to eat today? Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings
Collectors Edition?')

As I said, technically rather uninteresting picture, but I like its look and it
was finished within 2 days. After that I just didn't know how I could improve
it without cluttering. Same thing happened to me in the history round, so I'm
getting used to it.

