Ranger Spring 2005 - Dan Goudy - 3D Computer Modeling - Galleries - Desk Gallery

3D Computer Modeling
CSCI 140 Spring 2005

Dan Goudy

2005 Spring ->3D Computer Modeling ->Galleries ->Dan Goudy

Dan Goudy		Desk Scene
	Out of Time


	Inspiration Terry Pratchett's Discworld. More specifically, in the Discworld books, there is Death. That is, there is the anthropomorphic personification of death. Death wears a black robe, wields a scythe, collects the souls of the dead, and is rather on the thin side, if you catch my drift. When Death speaks, it SOUNDS LIKE THIS. Death has a house on a small bit of land that exists outside what any rational person would call normal space. In this house is Death's study. The renders here show my interpretation of what this study might be like. As a disclaimer in case there are any Pratchett fans reading this, I acknowledge that I have not exactly followed the few descriptions that are given in the books, and I agree that whatever images you have in your head from reading those descriptions are indeed vastly superior to my renderings of them. Happy now? A last item of note is that Death has an hourglass for every person, through which slowly pour the sands of their lifetime. The passing of the last grain of sand into the bottom of the hourglass marks the end of the person's life. Or to take another view, it marks the start of Death's work.

Objects	Desk	Dan Goudy	Solid wood with marble inlay.
	Hourglass	Dan Goudy	Tick-tock.
	Pencil	Dan Goudy	From previous assignment.
	Candle 1	Dan Goudy	It burns! It burns!
	Candle 2	Dan Goudy	A lot like Candle 1.
	Window	Dan Goudy	Can't quite put my finger on it. . .
	Room	Dan Goudy	The floor is about all you can see, though.
	Mug	Lightwave content	Woefully empty.
	Book	Lightwave content	Resized and surface properties tweaked by me.

Textures	Book writing image	Lightwave content	This is the only image used in the scene.
	Mug texture	Lightwave content	Didn't touch it. (Not that I can recall, anyway. There have been some late nights.)
	Hourglass: top/bottom	Lightwave content	"Splotched Copper" preset.
	Hourglass: poles	Dan Goudy / Lightwave	Tweaked "Iron" preset.
	Hourglass: glass	Dan Goudy	Used a tutorial to get started.
Note: Any texturing not mentioned here was done by me, likely by messing with procedurals (or even more fun, layered procedurals) until they finally looked right.


	Problems and Solutions P1: Long render times on the hourglass. S1: Reduce the number of polys. P1.1: Now it doesn't look right, and gee, there's also some non-planar polys. S1.1: Play with "Reduce Polygons" settings to find a good balance, and triple the non-planars. P1.2: That helps, but it still takes a long time. S1.2: Yeah, that's the raytraced reflections. Turn down the raytracing recursion level some. P1.3: Better, but with anti-aliasing and 1280x1024 it still takes too long. S1.3: Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker. I'm not a doctor either. P2: Smoke coming off the candles would be cool. Maybe I'll find a tutorial.... particle emitters... hypervoxels... Hmm, maybe if I do this... no, that doesn't work. Or that. Or this other thing. And that button in the tutorial doesn't actually exist. S2: What? I don't see any smoke in this scene. P2.1: Well no, you wouldn't, now would you? S2.1: Ah, I see. Say that the candles are very clean burning. P3: If they have a procedural texture type named "Marble", why do I end up having to layer two other procedurals to get a decent looking marble texture? S3: That's not a problem. That's a question.


	Time Frame Unfortunately, I don't have exact numbers for the various parts of the assignment. I can, however, give you a general comparison of the time I spent on different tasks. 1. Coming in first with most time spent is the glass in the hourglass. Mostly in the modeling, but also in the texturing. 2. Layout. And more layout. Object arrangement wasn't too bad, camera placement was trickier, and lighting took some time. 3. Procedural textures. Considering they're on almost everything, it took a while to adjust them all. 4. Modeling everything else besides the hourglass glass. 5. Writing this report. And for the curious, I have render times. Renders were done at 1280x1024, enhanced medium anti-aliasing, raytracing on. dan_goudy1.jpg: 1h 11m 16s (4276.9s) dan_goudy2.jpg: 13m 5s (785.1s) dan_goudy3.jpg: 10m 30s (630.3s) dan_goudy4.jpg: 17m 39s (1059.8s) These times do not, of course, include the numerous test renders done through-out the project.


	References 1. Glass tutorial by Robin Wood. http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/LightwaveTuts/LWPacks/LWGlass/LWGlass-1.html This gave some good pointers about various settings in the surface editor for doing glass. 2. Badly written hypervoxel tutorial. I didn't end up using it, and I didn't bookmark it. 3. I looked at the cover of the textbook multiple times, but never got around to opening it. In hindsight, maybe it would have been helpful. 4. Last, but not least, helpful advice (again, about glass) from Clarke Steinback.


	Miscellaneous The sub-string "glass" appears in this report 18 times. There are also 4 question marks. Upwards of 90% of the people who read "it SOUNDS LIKE THIS" will not know what "THIS" sounds like

Concept Design and Storyboarding

Video Game Design Project

2005 Spring | 3D Computer Modeling | Concept Design and Storyboarding | Video Game Design Project

Applied Computer Graphics Program
Department of Computer Science
California State University, Chico
Chico, CA 95929-0410
530.898.5418
ranger@ecst.csuchico.edu

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