Making of the Wet Bird

After almost two months of modelling and tuning, I still felt that the final image was not complete. It lacked a focus. Then I realised that the image was actually made of layers: there was the "building" layer, the "cars" layer, the "ghost" layer. Each layer was on a smaller scale than the previous one, though not less important. This was very symbolic of the city as a fractal object, with each component having its own complexity whatever its size. All it needed was an ultimate layer of the smallest scale. Hence the bird, which I could make very small and though very visible. Since I didn’t have the time to model a bird, I first downloaded a sPatch sparrow made by Jerôme Livenais (http://www.chez.com/jrlivenais/vdesprit/gift/gift_eng.htm). I modified it, failed to uv-map it but, after a few test renders, decided that it was a bad choice. Though the model is good (see the image in Jerome’s page), it somehow looked like a bath toy when I put it on the lampost. It ruined the picture ! So I turned to the Web to do some bird-hunting. Finally, I came upon a bird image that, after much processing (it uses an alpha channel), I put on a box. You can see the jpg version on the right.

Click here to see a close-up of the bird in the final image

Final render

The picture was over. I knew about its many shortcomings : I could have added more trash (a coca-cola can, cigarette butts, empty bottles), more street signs, exhaust fumes for the cars, better textures for the buildings, better textures for the cars, better tailights, better crossing marks, detailed wiring for the street lights, more street furniture. But a deadline is a deadline and I was quite exhausted anyway.

The final render took about 21 hours on a Pentium II 350 Mhz. Most of it was spent in the last lines, where there are many reflections.

After the rain...

Further to a discussion with Glen Berry, I made 3 alternative versions of the Wet Bird using post-processing in Picture Publisher.

Variant 1

This variant was similar to a version Glen Berry had done with Photoshop and sent me. Here part of the blue was eliminated in the highlights. The rest of the image had increased red and yellow, and was desaturated.

Click here for a 480 x 640 image

Variant 2

This version was made by desaturating the image, and then resaturating it using an orange hue. The shadows were then sharpened.

Click here for a 480 x 640 image

Variant 3

This variant was made using rose-orange spotlights (in post-processing, not in Pov-Ray) pointing at the image's right corner.

Click here for a 480 x 640 image

Making of "The wet bird" - Part 9

The bird

Final render

After the rain...