EMAIL: Virtualmint@hotmail.com NAME: Caroline Prenoveau TOPIC: Spirit of Asia COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: "Taming the Dragon" COUNTRY: Canada (Quebec) RENDERER USED: Blender 2.22 TOOLS USED: Paint Shop Pro 6 (gamma and saturation correction) RENDER TIME: 10 min 13 sec HARDWARE USED: Pentium 2 (450 mhz) IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Well, it's a strange blue manga girl named Vikeena trying to tame a wild dragon. The dragon (named Gnylf) seems a little reluctant but he will not resist very long to the charm and the gentleness of his future master. And I feel it's not the first time they meet, because, in a certain way, they seem to know each other... Taming a dragon is hard and it takes time, it can't be done in just one day. But when you success, it's so cool because you get a good mount and also a friend to take you everywhere you want to go by the way of the sky. (I want a dragon too!! :) DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: First, I did the two characters. I modeled the manga girl using a tutorial for 3d studio max I found on http://www.comet-cartoons.com/toons/. It was not easy and needed a lot of twiking but I think it ended up pretty well. After, I added the clothing and the texturing. It was not too hard, just very long... (I hate UV mapping!). The most difficult part was surely the hair (I did it using a tutorial on the same page I mentioned previously). Then, I did the dragon. I started with a cube (like for the girl) and, subdivision after subdivision, it started to look like a dragon. It didn't take me so long, but I spent a lot of time on the texture (yeah, with the UV mapping system again!). And both of my characters are fully "ikatised" and animable (except for the faces, too hard to animate in meshes...). So I positioned them and ajusted the lighting and the camera. (I did the textures for the eyes of the girl, the symbols in her face, her hair, etc with Paint Shop Pro 6 and I found all the other textures on http://www.3dcafe.com/ and http://www.stormvision.net/) Then, I did the landscape (this was the boring part so I will not talk very much about it). Some people may ask me how I did the grass. Well, it was just pure and simple "cheating". First of all, it is made with meshes (which means a lot of vertices!). I did a small tuft of grass in mesh which I dupliframed on a curve twisted like spaghetti. It did a bigger tuft. Then, all I had to do was to duplicate this tuft and spread it anywhere I wanted on the ground. Stupid, simple, no headache :) (I tried with particules but the result was not what I wanted...) Also, I had troubles with the leaves (they were so undisciplined!) and with the mountains... But I'm happy with the result, it's not so bad. Finally, making this picture was a great deal of fun for me, and I hope watching it will bring you a little bit of this happiness ;)