EMAIL: libelle@webbwerks.com
NAME: Samuel J. Goldstein
TOPIC: Magic
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Necromancy / Dark Magic
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: www.cyberverse.com/~meander
RENDERER USED: Strata StudioPro 1.75
TOOLS USED: Poser 2, Photoshop, The Virtual Grove
RENDER TIME: 01:46:07
HARDWARE USED: PowerMac 8500/360MP 205M RAM
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
I thought that a novel apporach to the Magic topic would be the Magic of New Love. But
the image of young lovers off in the woods kept turning pornographic on me. Then an accidental
tweaking of the lighting threw me into a much darker frame of mind; the woods turned to
a haunted forest, and the lovers, well, they don't come 'round this part of the forest any more.

So...

The evil undead cast various incantations, while raising a fire-spirit.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
Had I had time, I would have redone this image using POV-Ray, since POV-Ray pictures always
seem to score so much better. The techniques used are all tranferable.

The skeletons were DXF files exported from Poser. The trees were extruded outlines that were
twisted around some (in POV-Ray, I would have used height fields). The branches on the trees
were generated by a program that I've never quite gotten to a releasable state (it's called
The Virtual Grove, and it kinda works on PowerMacs. Email me if you want a copy -- it exports
native POV-Ray or huge, clumsy DXF files).

The fire-spirit is all Blobs, with a nice semi-transparent, semi-high-ambient surface texture.

The ferns and leafy plants were done by scanning actual fern fronds and leaves, and making
corresponding transparency maps, then using the combined textures on very thin boxes.

The depth feeling is increased by using a purple fog.

The glowing octagram was just another mostly-transparent texture mapped onto a box. 

___Samuel___