Lightwave Mailing List Contest
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March's Topic was: The Beauty of Flight

CLICK HERE to view March's voting results



The challange in March's contest was to create anything that flies...this can be a living thing or a complex machine or even something as simple as a balloon.     The "catch" is to also include a beautiful background, like some SkyTracer clouds or snow-capped mountains or the ocean or whatever, as long as the background is viewed from the aerial perspective and compliments the main object with nice composition.

1st Place

    Filename: BalloonFlight.jpg
    Created by: Douglas Grant Goans
    E-Mail: goansgrafx@mindspring.com
    Web-Site: http://goansgrafx.home.mindspring.com

    Artist's Comments
    "Balloon Flight"

    The Narrative (a make-up-what-happens-next-adventure):

    EXT. FANTASTIC BALLOON - MORNING

    The FANTASTIC BALLOON hangs high above the silent land below. Assembled by an as yet unknown individual, this unique crew exchange stories of how the Fantastic Balloon appeared to each of them just yesterday out of nowhere. All of a sudden...

    The Numbers (Lightwave used for objects, rendering and compositing. Photoshop used for textures and tweaking.):

    1. Background landscape is made of one land object with 3072 polys and a cloud object with 3072 polys. One color texture map and bump map for the ground. One transparency texture for the clouds with motion for the cloud object. Render with motion blur.

    2. One balloon object with 70,000 polys, 2 color texture maps, one bump map, and 2 diffuse maps. Composite and render with aforementioned background image and one lens flare.

    3. Photoshop resizing, contrast, desaturate, noise, and save.

    4. Thanks for taking time to look at my image. 8-)
2nd Place

    Filename: The_Temple.jpg
    Created by: Eki Halkka
    E-Mail: erkki.halkka@kolumbus.fi
    Web-Site: http://www.kolumbus.fi/erkki.halkka/

    Artist's Comments
    As international adventurer Joe Smith climbed his ultra-lite above the mountain range that surrounded the rainy rain forests where the rain came down like rain from the drain in a rainy weather, boy it was wet there, he realized he had finally found what he had been searching for during the last two long decades. In a golden stream of light was the temple, almost hidden by vegetation but still so familiar, so recognizable.

    It was obvious that the enormous temple of the wave of light was built by the same great ancient tribe that had victoriously kept their stand against the regime of the evil Mayans, and their religion pure in the pressure of notorious Shiva-worshiping crusaders and all the other scum like them.

    Now, if he just found a place to bring this baby down - he was low on kerosene, too - it would be just a matter of time, patience and effort until he had the possession of the long lusted purple jewel case which held, according to the legends, all the answers and more..."

    Nothing much to tell about the technical side, I did some image maps for the plane in Photoshop, also the elev. map for mountains. Rest of the textures are LW procedurals. I also did some minor tweaking in PS to the final image, contrast and some grain mostly.

    Volumetrics were done with steamer.

    Hope you dig the img.

    Oh, "International Adventurer Joe Smith" is a character from Matti "huuhaa" Innanen's hilarious radio show, that aired in Finland in the seventies or something ;-)
Third Place

    Filename: Flyer.jpg
    Created by: Stuart Penn
    E-Mail: stuart@sapenn.demon.co.uk
    Web-Site: http://www.sapenn.demon.co.uk/lw3d

    Artist's Comments
    "Flyer and Waves"

    The glider is based on the Wright Brothers Flyer (the first powered aircraft) but before it was fitted with an engine. I did consider adding the engine but thought it detracted from the scene. I felt a glider gave it more of a relaxed/peaceful feel and fitted better with the birds. Having the glider over the sea just seemed appropriate - if not entirely wise for the pilot . The birds are modelled on Sooty Terns - adolescent birds of this species can stay aloft for 10 years before landing to breed.

    Some technical stuff. Everything was done in Lightwave 5.6 from scratch - except for a texture map in Photoshop. I used Skytracer for the sky. The water is just a combination of crumple, fractal bumps and fractal noise with a bit of Fast Fresnel thrown in for good measure. The scene is lit with 3 distant lights - one for the sun and 2 for a bit of atmospheric fill. I used the old spinning light trick to soften the shadows from the sun.

    The image took 22 minutes to render on a dual 400 MHz PII with enhanced high AA.





Honorable Mentions
Here are the other images entered into the March 1999 contest:



Entry #02
Filename: Iceman.jpg
Created by: fernando Bartra


Entry #05
Filename: Fox_One.jpg
Created by: Dan Bloomfield


Entry #06
Filename: F16.jpg
Created by: Daniel Berlin


Entry #07
Filename: Grounded.jpg
Created by: Chris Banks


Entry #08
Filename: Hope.jpg
Created by: Adam Gore


Entry #09
Filename: Flyvis.jpg
Created by: Andreas C. Moll


Entry #10
Filename: Vaguero.jpg
Created by: Andrés Rocha


Entry #11
Filename: Airborne.jpg
Created by: Dion Hopkins


Entry #12
Filename: AllQuiet.jpg
Created by: Griffon


Entry #13
Filename: MechBird.jpg
Created by: Fred Townsend


Entry #14
Filename: Beech17.jpg
Created by: Don Vinson


Entry #15
Filename: Joy_Of_Flight.jpg
Created by: Eetu Martola


Entry #16
Filename: Wwhale.jpg
Created by: Michael Harney




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