TITLE: Within A World of Wonder
NAME: Charles H. Rousseau
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: rousseauc@bellarmineprep.org
TOPIC: Museums
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: chrmuseo.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Bryce 5.0

TOOLS USED: 
    Rhino 2.0

RENDER TIME: 
    8.5 hours

HARDWARE USED: 
    Windows PC

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

The image was intended to convey the entry into a contemporary museum of science
and technology; many that I have visited tend to be more of a hodge-podge
collection of whatever is available to show.  I originally meant to create a
more traditional setting with acres of display cabinets of models and stuffed
dead things, but I could not get excited about that.  In our part of Washington
state we have an air museum with planes hanging from the ceiling and will soon
have a car museum in Tacoma to go with some natural history/state history sorts
of facilities and I was trying to capture the mood of all of these.  

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The showcase in the background was originally intended to be the focal point of
the image, a corner in a somewhat old and dusty museum.  The case contains a
map of the world and several fossil skulls from different continents with
appropriate scientific tags.  But as I began to play with the possible shapes
of the surrounding environment, I began to move from a rectangular, one-floor
shape to an oval, multi-story structure with galleries and spiral staircases. 
As the camera was backed farther away from the fossil case, more and more
elements were required to give it a sense of reality.  A few of the images are
visual cheats, flat images with an alpha channel concealing their edges, but
there are over 80 individual mesh models, some copied from pictures in
magazines--the lamps are modeled after those in a church in Portland, Oregon. 
The plane, the car and the junk originally came from a CD collection of
low-polygon models which I imported into Rhino and rebuilt by substitution
several of the more 'puffy parts' which were of such low resolution that they
looked inflated with air. The sign and rope and pole-set, the showcase,
furniture and museum structure were all original and I am particularly pleased
with the spiral staircases, one of the elements from this project which I have
already removed and saved separately for another use.  The suit of armor is
parts from two different models resized to make one and I wish I had brought it
closer to the front.  The animals are flat images with alpha channels whose
edges don't show up in the lighting.  Several of the other items are just odds
and ends I had in model folders.  The whole set was assembled into Rhino and
exported as a set of .3ds files into Bryce where everything was textured and
lit and rendered a few times to try for an image which responded to the
critiques of my previous entries--too dark, too blurry, not enough shadows or
reflections.  Hopefully this image is well-lit, sharp around the edges with
lots of shadows and reflections.  It was fun.  

