Under Pressure

Member : clipka

Image description
Just like the crew of the Deep Sea Vehicle "DSV-2 Alvin" - having discovered the phenomenon of the "black smokers", searing-hot mineral-rich fountains at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean - is under heavy pressure, both literally (the spherical pressure vessel of their vehicle having to withstand the equivalent of 4.000 tons) and psychically (if anything went wrong, they would have a - literal - deadline of 3 days to be rescued from a depth of 3 km before running out of spare oxygen), so is the author of this picture, who attempted the feat of setting Alvin and the black smokers in scene within no more than 3 days to spare; so, here he is, trapped with his haphazard final render settings, a bad estimation of required rendering time, and time creeping on like the cold fingers of death in a pitch-dark watery grave...

Description of how this image was created
100% hand-crafted; Alvin and ocean floor are Wings3D mesh models, everything else is just a few primitive objects media effects. Time was cruel to me (and still is right now): I had to cut my plan of adding an abundance of the life that - surprisingly - can be found down there. I didn't manage to find good media and radiosity settings in time, so I humbled myself and resorted to painting over the worst artifacts in photoshop, to make sure they don't totally kill the picture (you should be able to easily identify the paint jobs, though). Final render settings made Alvin unexpectedly less prominent than in my previous test renders, but I'll just have to live with that now. And having totally mis-estimated the rendering time from a 160x120 test render and the first lines of the final render, there I was, after >10h of rendering time, with the main render only about 40% complete and only 4 hours to go! Fortunately, I had anticipated such a disaster; my contingency plan was to take the half-finished 800x600 render, and paste in scaled-up portions of the last 160x120 test render - which I did with final settings already, except for anti-aliasing which probably messed up my time estimations. So here it is - the result of failure to reach my goals; I still hope it will turn out a successful failure, but that'll be up to you. Swallowed by the depth of the ocean of time, my only hope now lies in help from outside.

General statistics
No of ratings	:	13
Min. overall rating	:	19 (7 / 7 / 5)
Max. overall rating	:	47 (19 / 15 / 13)
Sum of rating	:	453 / 780
Date uploaded	:	2008-10-17 23:54:52

Specific details Note: The maximum value below is misleading as the voting system has changed. If the member votes for all the entries and has created one him/herself, there is an automatic 20/20/20 score added to the value (This encourages all members who enter to vote).
Rating type	:	Min : Max : Sum : Out of
Artistic	:	6 : 20 : 161 : 260
Concept	:	7 : 20 : 162 : 260
Technical	:	3 : 20 : 130 : 260
Overall	:	19 : 60 : 453 : 780

Comments by members when rating this image

1.   23-10-2008 Good attempt. Interesting idea of compositing in the 160x120 test render to meet the dead line. It's a little noticeable. Good effort all in all. 2.   20-10-2008 I am sorry you had not enough time to finish the render properly! It is one of the better attempts in this round, so I shall be gentle in my rating :-) 3.   20-10-2008 Much too dark for me ! Should put some more ambient light 4.   19-10-2008 Now that I know to look for them, the boundaries of your patchworking is obvious; there are some definite focal blur issues (the base of the far stack, for instance). Hint: never admit your shortcomings to the people judging you. From a conceptual standpoint, it's hard to see Alvin behind the lights. Maybe move the camera around to view the scene from the side. 5.   18-10-2008 The concept is good however I really don't feel tht you have managed to turn that into reality (partly due to being so rushed etc). I would definitely like to see this image after a bit more work. 6.   18-10-2008 Honestly, this is a mess. But I understand from the text that it is part of the concept :-)