The First Christmas (ge

This is a demonstration version of the Year Three IRTC CDROM

The First Christmas (ge_first.jpg) by Guillermo Espitia Rojas

1. ORGANIZATION OF THE SCENE

At the first time, I made a general portrayal general of the scene with primitives simulating the main objects. With this general scheme I studied alternatives to be located the camera. Once the alternatives were defined I determined than elements would appear into the scene and the degree of detail of the modeling. Afterwards I defined the necessities of illumination of each of the alternatives. The following step consisted in to define the best alternative. With this procedure I avoided to model elements that would not appear inside of the frame of the scene; in this way I saved time and I avoided to waste the resources of my computer.

Latterly I divided the scene at four subscenes: the baby, the tree and its adornments, the illumination of the tree, and the gifts. For each one I put a element common: the room.

After the subescenas were combined at only one. This process allowed to perform numerous render of test of short durability.

2. BABY

The head, the hair, the hands and the dress were modeled with Spatch. The output were done at format DXF, for afterwards to convert it to meshes with 3Dwin. The increase of the perfomance went very important to the change of patches to meshes.

The eyes are a couple of spheres of Pov. The lips, the eyebrows and the hair were modeled by separate to make easy the location of textures.

The modeling of the head and the hands were performed with the tutorial of Anto Matkovic. This tutorial is one of the best than I have seen in the Web, it is very concise but very complete. (http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/7415/).

The texture of the eyes is layered with pattern agate and wood. The textures of the hair and of the dress was made with bumps.

3. TREE

At beginning, the leaf at form of needle of the tree was made with bicubic patch (7 points at Spatch). At the tests of the tree, the 32 MB of Ram were not sufficients and after a long parse gave an error.

Latterly I modeled the leaf at form of needle with major detail (13 points in Spatch). The output did at format DXF and after it was converted to meshes with 3DWin. At the tests, the time of render was very short (my first experience with meshes).

4. ADORNMENTS

For the texture of the balls of christmas I did many tests with negative results.

Finally, I finished using something very single, a texture New Brass with modification of the color and the addition of reflection. The texture of a ball was made with texture_map.

The ball broken was made with textures only (I didn't make modeled of the edges broken). The ball broken is composed of one difference (CSG) of two concentrics spheres. The texture was made with texture_map, pattern onion, noise with sine_wave and a value of scale very accurate. The textures of the two spheres are equal but with different colors.

The socks of christmas are height-fields with image_maps. The gifs were obtained at: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/2132/Christmas.

One of the adornments was made with the program Helixir.

5. ILLUMINATION

The illumination is very single: a main light, a rose light to highlight the face of the baby and lights for the bulbs. At the bulbs I used soft halos.

6. OTHERS

In the gifts I used single textures (pattern bozo and leopard), texture_maps (pattern gradient and agate) and image_maps.

The wallpaper and the card were drawed with Corel Draw.

The texture of the cane was made with pattern spiral1.

7. GRATEFULNESS

During the creation of this image my wife Ligia was always present with her suggestions and criticisms. I thank her for her patience and her valuable collaboration.

Comments

From bobfranke@halcyon.com (Bob Franke):

Nice job modeling the child, however the skin look a bit plastic and Poser-like. The best area for improvement is in the lighting. The scene look very flat, almost two dimensional. The ribbons, tree and light cords are also well done.

From Martin.Magnusson.7121@student.uu.se (Martin Magnusson):

Paola's face is just excellent, as are the things hanging in the tree. However - things that could be improved: the needles could be more irregular, the light under the tree looks "flat" (maybe adding some extra light source or radiosity would be good), and the wallpaper could have some extra details, like edges between the different sections, if you know what I mean. Anyway, this is a very good image!

From gregj56590@aol.com (Greg M. Johnson):

Actually, I thought this had more of a problem with ambient light than with the attractiveness of the child.

The realism of the image is ruined by the texturing on the child's lower cloth, the absolutely uniform color and square modelling of the presents, etc. The tree and ornaments themselves are pretty well done.

From dick@buckosoft.com (Dick Balaska):

The stocking looks like you layed it on afterwards. What's with that black outline?

From gmccarter@hotmail.com (Glenn McCarter):

The tree and ornaments are stunningly real, which is a large contrast to the baby which looks like a doll. A mistake: the blue sphere shows me that the rest of the room is empty. Great effort overall.

From djconnel@flash.net (Dan Connelly):

Wow -- the modeling of the components of the scene is excellent! The scene just needs a bit more creative use of perspective and lighting to make it a real winner. The wallpaper, for example, appears a bit flat, and the scene is a bit to well lighted. But the model of the baby, especially, is amazing! The only issue is a bit more use could be made of texture -- the baby is a bit doll-like (I thought at first it was from Poser, which is characterized by this problem).

From east103@dialaccess.com (Phillip L. Easton):

Very nice picture. Good tree and baby. The lighted part of the bottom of the sphere surrounding the lights dosen't look right to me. Also the texture on the gifts looks too flat.

From ethelm@bigfoot.com (Ian & Ethel MacKay):

Very good modelling. On topic. Could probably have been improved by lighting that was not so flat.

From blaineholmes@hotmail.com (Blaine Holmes):

Love the bows on the boxes. Lots of detail in the tree.

From wozzeck@club-internet.fr (Francois Dispot):

Impressive modelling, really. But this took all your time so lighting and even more etxtures can be really improved. Go on!

From clem@dhol.com:

This is a very good picture overall. The tree, the ornaments, the ribbons, the wrapping paper and the wallpaper are very good indeed. The lights on the tree are outstanding, especially the twisted cord and the glow around the lights. The clothing on the baby is also quite good (despite the purple dinosaur!) The baby is well modelled, but the pose is too stiff and the skin texture is too smooth and plastic, giving a doll-like appearance. The hair also needs more detail. The height field stockings do not work very well. They are much too flat and they detract from the very good realism of the tree. I particularly like the golden ornament near the top of the picture. Aside from the problems with the baby, your textures are very good.

From martial@biosys.net (Rameaux Martial):

Hi! It vey love this image! So! Sure, because the Chrismas atmosphere? Yes, But I love it sure because the works is very works! I to thanks you for the zip files, I already learn to the image_map ! :-)

From jaime@ctav.es (Jaime Vives Piqueres):

Buen trabajo con tu hija! Las proporciones resultan muy creibles. Es una pena que la iluminacion general no deje percibir bien las bombillas del arbol. En mi humilde opinion, podrias haber usado una iluminacion mas tenue, indirecta, como de una chimenea talvez, al lado contrario del arbol. Pero ya sabes, soy un fan del claroscuro...

From web user at pluto.icom-solutions.com:

I really liked the tree and decorations, particularly the needles which are very realistic. The background behind the baby is a little confused - I wasn't sure whether the red and green were boxes or skirting board on the wall. Also it would be better if there wasn't a present coming out of the babys head. Perhaps something else would be better in the background e.g. a chair or table. Of course in real life the tree would be being pulled over by the baby (1998 was my own son's first Christmas and we had to tie the top of the tree to a bracket). Notable for originality, modelling

From web user at haka.saunalahti.fi:

Adding some randomity to the tree would make it look more natural. Also, it seems as if there should be more shadows in the picture than there are, it's hard to establish the relative positions of the objects. (Is the baby holding the cardboard sock? If not, what's it hanging from? If the "broken" ball is lying on the box, shouldn't it cast a shadow?) The baby is well modeled, but looks a bit too much like a plastic doll. Oh, and the ear has no hole.