TITLE: Admiring Edison
NAME: Simon Osbaldeston
COUNTRY: England
EMAIL: simplepsy@aol.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.cgchannel.com/gallery/viewprofil.jsp?artID=1352
TOPIC: Great Inventions
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: edison1.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    3D Studio Max 6

TOOLS USED: 
    Mental Ray (free with Max 6)

RENDER TIME: 
    10 Hours aprox

HARDWARE USED: 
    AMD Athlon XP 2000, 512Mb Ram, GForce 4 ti

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

        Background - I Chose to do an image to celebrate a truely great
invention.  Without it we had little control over how we see after dark,
allowing for increased productivity in all areas of life.  The first electric
light involved two electrodes and a spark created between the two.  These
lights were too bright and often were too distracting for commercial and
domestic use.  The incandesant bulb was invented, using a conductive filament
with high electrical resistance, however the filament lasted only a few minutes
at most due to Oxygen in the air speeding up the burning prosess.  Sir Thomas
Edison, a british scientist, set about to create a filament light that would
burn for days.  With the help of Swan, an American scientist they created a
filament light surrounded by a vacuum bulb that prevented the air from making
contact with the filament.  Hence the electric incandesant Light Bulb.  
        The Image - I decided to show off the light bulb as a work of pure
genious and art.  On display for admiration.  The scene shows several lights
hung from a ceiling, some lit and some not.  To add interest I varied the
lengths of the cords from which the bulbs are hung.  A man sits to view the
exhibit, surrounded by light, however focused on the brightest example.  


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

        Ultimately I needed to mix simplicity with interest. My last entry was
too simplistic, so this time I chose to aproach the subject from a more
interesting angle. 
Firstly I needed to plan the layout.  I chose to use a centered parallel camera
angle to allow the perspective in the image maximum effect. This would help to
add some depth to what is essentialy a shallow viewing area.  I chose to
scatter the lights randomly at varying lengths to avoid the common 'deliberate'
CG look. 
To keep some ballance I chose to offset the man to the left, and have a closer
bulb to the right, setting the cameras focus off the near bulb to avoid it
dominating the image. 
Next I constructed the basic bulb model using a lathed spline for the majority
of it.  Simple shapes made up most of the room and the bench, maintaining a
modern clean look. I rotated the bench off parallel deliberatly to add some
human error.  
I chose the Mental Ray renderer for its fantastic global illumination, and its
caustic effects.  Fortunately Mental ray has a very realistic depth of field,
and some fantastic shaders. 
The shader for the glass of the bulb was complex. I used a combination of Mental
Ray Dialectric materials and Translucant Shaders, for the far lights I needed a
different tranlucancy shader with SSS simulation to get the nessessary glow on
the unlit bulbs off the nearby lit ones. 
The plastics were simple DGS shaders.  I always used the photon shader
counterparts for accurate GI and Causics. 
An omni light with Photons were placed inside every lit bulb with inverse square
falloff to accuratly simulate the lighting and shadows.  
Due to time, The man is from Lowpolygon3D.com off the issue 50 coverdisc from
3dworld - credit is due to them. 
Everything else in the scene is modeled by me, and all shaders are assembled by
me from a combination of procedurals and some of max's native texture library.

The scene took about 10 hours to render on my pc. 
Unfortunatly due to the size of the files I cant include the source files.  But
i would be happy to help anyone who wants it. 


