[October 2001]My entry in the September 2001 IRTC contest was a scene depicting the American Cemetary in Normandy. The final scene is shown to the right, and you can also read the Text File Describing it. At the time of this writing, the votes aren't in yet, so I can't tell you how well I did in the competition.
Below, I'll show some images from steps along the way to the
creation of the final. My descriptions are brief, as most of the
description is already written for the text file above, and I don't
particularly want to repeat myself. If I have time, I'll integrate
the text there with the pictures here, so that it's not
necessary to refer to them separately.
To the left is shown a preliminary image of the sky. Note how the
directly illuminated surfaces are yellow, and those in shadow are
blue, as expected. The sky is the first part of the image I worked
on.
On the right is a sample image I made while developing the stone
texture and interior. You can see how light passes through the boxes
around the edges, which is the effect I was trying to achieve, having
remembered that granite looks like that.
Here are are shown two tests of the engraving script. The one on the left is a simple
solid piece of stone, whereas the one on the right has the translucent
texture developed above.
The concrete stones and reflecting pool have a very detailed texture,
which is shown to the right. It doesn't really appear in the image,
but I think that having the detailed texture makes a positive
contribution to the image's realism even though it can't be clearly
seen.
That's pretty much all the pieces, except for the grass and trees,
which are described in their own section.
While working on the final image, I had a simple "stand-in" version of
all the parts. The image on the left is a version of the final image
which uses these simplified versions. It takes about two minutes to
render, as opposed to the 20+ hours that the final version at the top
of the page takes, so it's very useful for positioning items.
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Terran Melconian.
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