Hughes, B. wrote:
> Hey Jim, been admiring your masks. I have a difficult time seeing this as
> wood and metal but I just like the appearance as being a bit mysterious
> anyhow. That way I can imagine it being some sort of wood, stone, clay, or
> metal.
> 
> I searched for such a mask and found, within two clicks on links, what looks
> like the twin of yours here.
> 
> http://www.hamillgallery.com/BAMANA/BamanaMasks/BamanaMask14.html


That's my boy!  Actually it was example BamanaMask06 that I was looking 
at more often, but I was only trying for a level of accuracy that would 
encompass either of those sources.
> 
> The photo shows, what looks to me, like a dry, dusty wood with thin,
> corroding metal (of unknown type) overlay. The wood and metal aren't
> entirely distinguishable from each other except for the wood being lighter
> in color, opposite of what you chose to do. Yours seems newer and oiled by
> comparison. 

Yes exactly, it is that dry, dusty shine that I am finding so elusive.
And I was really hoping to get it. OTOH, the masks at the Met are all 
very much darker and, in fact, have an oily sheen or dull lustre, 
probably from either vegetable dyes or possibly the wood being of a dark 
variety. One example has the deep black-reds of mahogany. Different 
masks show that wood of radically different types is used.  Some has the 
broad grain of softwood, probably even kiln treated, some the dense 
tangled grain of tropical hardwood.  Yet in worn spots this dense wood 
still has more of a "punky" appearance than the fibrous look I would 
expect from a harder wood. The obvoius softwoods are still color almost 
black though. There are more lighter, drier, weathered looking woods but 
they are usually from Eastern Africa / Madagascar.  The exhibits don't 
say the type of wood. When I try to take this model in the darker 
direction, it tends to look like a chocolate bunny.  I still think a lot 
has to do with the difficulty of getting a lot of crisp minutia on the 
surface which would allow a high spec but would still matt things down. 
When you average a lot of tectures you seem to get the molten feel.  I 
also tried converting to functions and adding or multiplying them but it 
was indeterminate whether this improved things. I feel like I've thrown 
everything but the kitchen sink at it including using finish maps with 
mlpov.  The crackle pattern with the form modifier that I am using to 
get the vague sense of scalloping also has a finish map applied, with 
the 'ridges' being higher spec lower roughness and the hollows lower 
spec higher roughness. Whatever.  I really thought that might also be 
the key.  The look of worn and burnished wood seems to be precisely that 
the high parts look polished and the hollows, matt.  Whatever.

The metal mask part could use a lot more attention, it's is almost an 
afterthought, but I think I'll give the whole thing a rest for now. In 
the photos it looks shiny.  In NO museum exhibits does it look this way. 
  It lots very matt and colored of a piece with the wood. BTW of 
possible interest to Wings users, the mesh for the metal mask was used 
without any smoothing being applied on export. It is just the raw 
"cage".  The embossed bumps are in the geometry, their is no bump map used.


The modelling itself already looked right to me, even without
> having seen the photo, but now it's even more obvious how well you recreated
> the real thing.

Thank's. I still need to achieve a more crudely hacked at appearance. 
Maybe this is obvious, maybe not, I came to the whole African Mask thing 
precisely for the technical reason that that Hamill Gallery site has 
dead-on front and profile axial views of the objects. With that kind of 
  reference you can model with a lot more confidence. That and that I 
knew that I really am not good enough yet to do realistic human faces 
and I thought the slightly crude, exaggerated forms of the masks would 
provide a laboratory for learning mesh modelling.  Also a longtime 
fascination with how maskmakers use materials.  Tactility, as I have 
often trumpeted on these groups.  Now I am interested in the 
anthromorphism, the projection of sentience, which obviously connects 
with a lot of cg and other issues.
> 
> BTW, makes me think of some kind of Roman helmet, so I found a photo of one
> of those, too.
>  

I hurry through those parts of the museum lest I get sucked in ;)
But yeah, I need to teeeeear myself away from this particular model.

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