CSCI 140 Desk Gallery

3-D Computer Modeling 
CSCI 140 Fall 2002

Mauro, Brendan

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Desk
Brendan MauroDesk Scene
Archeologic
 
I got the idea for this project last semester in CSCI 040.  My 040 lab was scheduled right before one of the 140 labs and since I usually stayed and worked late I kept up with what was going on in the class.  This way I knew what our first project was going to be some time ago and had plenty of time to think about it.

One of the 040 projects was a kaliedescope, and I had decided to go with an egyptian theme.  The result can be seen here as the artifact on the desk, and is what gave me the idea for a sort of Indiana Jones 30s/40s flavored scene.  Originally I was going to put even more into the scene, perhaps have the artifact glowing ominously, but, you know, time constraints....
 
 
 
Objects
DeskBrendan
PencilBrendan
GlassBrendan
LampBrendan
ArtifactBrendan
MagnifierBrendan
Blue, Red, Green BooksBrendan
JournalBrendan
Papyrus ScrapBrendan
Textures
Desk3dcafe.com     wood22_tile.jpg
Walls3dcafe.com     wood22_vert.jpg
PencilBrendan
ArtifactBrendan
BooksBrendan
JournalBrendan
Papyrus ScrapBrendan
 
Problems and Solutions:
Most of the problems I had dealt with texturing.  Most of my texturing ventures went pretty smoothly, but I had some real problems with the text in the journal.  For some reason just applying an image map to the color channel was inadequate; when rendered it was washed out and you could hardly tell there was any text at all.  I ended up increasing the contrast on the image and applying an alpha layer in both the color and diffuse channels.  I'm still not satisfied with it but this is the best I could get it to be.

Similarly when I tried applying the hieroglyphics to the scrap, they appeared white rather than the intended grey, but I actually liked that decided to keep it that way. Also, I've noticed that on my computer there is a (intentional) chiaroscuro contrast in the renderings, whereas on other computers this contrast is significantly dampened.  I find this annoying since certain areas I thought were in shadow and therefore hidden from view are now visible.

Tutorials used as reference for this scene:
Glass:  http://www.liquid-arts.de/techniques.htm
Paper Scrap:  http://www.mgfx.net/readtutorial.php?article_id=1011
Everything else was done from scratch or with techniques learned from the above..