EMAIL: amason@cs.uct.ac.za NAME: Ashton Mason TOPIC: Imaginary Worlds COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Imaginary numbers COUNTRY: South Africa WEBPAGE: http://www.cs.uct.ac.za/~amason/silicon.trip/Integers/index.html RENDERER USED: 3D Studio MAX 2.5 TOOLS USED: Photoshop, Character Studio RENDER TIME: about 10 minutes HARDWARE USED: Pentium 2 233 Mhz, 128 MB RAM IMAGE DESCRIPTION: "Bored with his mundane life as an integer, Bill dreamed of the thrill and excitement of being an imaginary number" The image is intended to be a cartoon, basically in the style of Gary Larson. I wanted to show two integers in their kitch and rundown home, suggesting that integers are less interesting numbers than imaginary numbers (an abstract number type used by mathematicians) and that they therefore might be bored with their mundane lives. The One character, called Bill, is dissatisfied with his life as an integer and dreams of being an imaginary number. But imaginary numbers are imaginary by definition so it is doubtful whether they exist or what their lives might be like. And numbers can't change what they are, so Bill's dreams will probably never be realised. Ultimately the joke is on those who wish continually for imaginary worlds, forgetting to live in the real world around them. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: For the One and Zero characters I used extruded text for the bodies and meshsmoothed hand-edited meshes for the arms and legs. I used Character Studio to position the characters into appropriate poses. This is the first time I've tried to use Character Studio and it has been a good learning experience. I created the chair using the same method as I used for the character arms and legs: meshsmoothing a hand-edited mesh. The wallpaper is a Julia fractal created in Fractint. The carpet texture was created with the built in MAX cellular map.