EMAIL: otomo@postoffice.worldnet.att.net
NAME: Michael J. Holmes
TOPIC: Magic
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: "Holy War"
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: The perpetually unfinished http://otomo.simplenet.com/
RENDERER USED: Bryce 2.1
TOOLS USED: Photoshop 4, GraphicConverter 2.8
RENDER TIME: 2 hours and 25 minutes
HARDWARE USED: Power Macintosh 7100/66
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
   "Holy War"
    On the backworld of Po, the magician castes had, for a series of complex geopolitical reasons, become excessively specialized over the course of centuries. Huygerwan, the City of Alchemists, was one example of a highly focused caste. They could construct kilometer tall towers of bronze, but could hardly defend themselves when the Despot of the Inconstant Seas came to power in fifth year after the Krinsai Rituals. The Despot raised a legion of iballs- subdimensional daemons captured by intricate cage spells- that caused most of the damage in Po's ruinous world war.
     The iballs, a dubious form of military magic, are difficult to control unless the magician who does the initial capturing possesses enormous leverage to use against the daemons to assure their obedience. It was quite impossible for the Despot to have such control over an entire legion of iballs, and so he suffered massive "friendly fire" losses in his campaigns against his enemies.
     In the image, three iballs, having left Huygerwan in the grip of massive daemonfyre spells, approach an Alchemist temple, placed out beyond the limits of the city as dictated by Alchemist tradition. Although the dual purpose glyph of worship and defiance still glows in the air over the temple, it has already begun to be gutted by daemonfyre under the baneful gaze of the nearest iball.
     The Po global civil war ended one hundred and fifty years ago, and the outcome was unclear at best. It sent that once wonderful world into a dark age from which it is only now emerging.
DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
     Nothing partuculary mindbending in the creation process. I tend to favor simple models and use color and texture to get my effects. I really don't have the time for multiday renders. ;-)
     The heightmaps for the mountains and towers of Huygerwan, the staring eye textures for the iballs and the glyph of worship/defiance were all created in Photoshop.
     The glyph of worship is the command key symbol for a Macintosh, typed once at 256 point, Gaussian blurred, and mapped on a square with a transparency mask.
     The daemonfyre and the smoke plume are standard issue volumetric textures on spheres.
     The temple is a simple hollow hexagonal column with a cylinder for a roof. The door and windows were subtracted cylinders. This was done with Bryce primitives.