The Long Haul

Member : rmcgregor

Image description
After the fall of the fossil fuel empires the elephant masters realized their good fortune in having such readily available labor at hand. After piecing together scraps from some old tanks and a ship wreck they had the perfect post-apocalyptic pachyderm package and freight transport system, hauling goods across the plains.

Description of how this image was created
The Sky When Ive posted his recent Terragen sky thread it made reminisce about how nice an averaged Terragen sky would be in this round. (Sidebar: I first started playing with Terragen skies after reading Gilles Tran's making of "The Dark Side of the Trees" many years ago, but I haven't used a Terragen sky in a render since the Nov 2007 "Airplanes" round.) Anyhoo – this sky is two different Terragen sky renders averaged with a simple sky_sphere gradient, projected onto a billboard background plane with light ground fog to help blend into the overall shot. The Plains The background mountains/hills are height_fields. The main ground area (the plains) is a simple mesh grid that I deformed in Silo; planar image mapped with a 2k tiling grass image that I made. The Elephants These big guys derive from the free DAZ elephant model that I imported first into Poser 8 for posing, and then imported the posed meshes into Silo to make each unique and to add the leather, straps, gear, etc. The Cargo Barge I modeled and UV mapped the cargo barge and freight in Silo (yes, my "Mama" nightmare week was a great learning tool for this gem of a modeler). Both procedural and imaged_mapped textures are employed here. Lighting A single area light simulates the physical sun while indirect lighting is provided by HDRI (an EXR of a desert scene) and radiosity (of course) for an overall sense of photorealism. Miscellaneous I achieved the "dusty trail" effect by using some simple scattering media along with several semi-transparent image_pattern planes. I was going to have plants too, but (as usual) I ran out of time :(

General statistics
No of ratings	:	10
Min. overall rating	:	31 (9 / 10 / 12)
Max. overall rating	:	50 (17 / 17 / 16)
Sum of rating	:	436 / 600
Date uploaded	:	2009-10-18 00:00:55

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	:	9 : 20 : 138 : 200
Concept	:	10 : 20 : 150 : 200
Technical	:	12 : 20 : 148 : 200
Overall	:	31 : 60 : 436 : 600

Comments by members when rating this image

1.   30-10-2009 Wow - when I looked first but well, also some flaws when looking closer: e.g. I do not buy the texture of the ship hull. And the elephants seem to come from some strange genetic pool 'cause the ears have all exacly the same folds ;) -Ive 2.   24-10-2009 Far too silly for words. I love it! SMcA 3.   20-10-2009 [ThomdeG] Like always, a stunning image. Good modelling, good composition, good texturing. Maybe, the use of African elephants would be impossible though, as only the Indian ones have really been domesticated. But, I know! No Indian elephant model available :-) 4.   18-10-2009 Good work on the elephants and tank treads; however, the remainder of the image clearly tells a tale of having been started too late again. I can't see your "grass", and the ship appears disfigured to me (I guess it's just the perspective, but it's irritating nonetheless). - C.Lipka