Shay wrote:


> Preferred the old background, though. I can with the new background 
> quite easily imagine an entire African scene with elephants waking 
> across a misty field. 

Both versions are simply intended to be artificial.  I can go either 
way.  The darker version gives you only the highlighted areas of the 
model sort of looming in the murk; the ligher version shows up the 
darkened profile of the shaded part of the model also. Makes it more of 
an artifact.  I can go either way.  I do like the expressive potential 
of murk.

There is the potential for real tromp l'oeil when the shaded profile is 
missing.  In my youth I worked in the headworks of a gold mine quite far 
north.  It was a night shift job and I would stare out over the dark 
tundra, caught in an internal loop of thoughts about how it was 
basically trackless waste until you get to Russia,... until I'd spook 
myself out.  Then I would turn and there was this particular gear case 
that was sort of a soft egg shape, like a human head.  A steep, raking 
light would fall across some dust patterns on it, and I tell ya, I'd 
jump right out of my wellingtons.

If I may add, I think the angle of the light source is also significant. 
  The steeper angle in the first example casting deep shadows on the 
upper lips and cheeks also gave the mask a certain mystery or even 
psychic presence.  A cheap effect, but one that always seems to work.
> 
> The old texture appeared to be completely covered in tool marks. This 
> has been disastrously lost in this latest version. 

LOL! You know how to hurt a guy.  It was precisely those tool marks, 
especially the scalloping from a shallow gouge or draw-knife, that I was 
trying to get!  In the previous version I intersected widely scaled 
dents patterns with extreme variations on the poly_wave to get that 
effect.  In this version I tried spotted, radial, spiral, cosines (Jaime 
uses cosines for his water far as I can tell),...I had some better 
success with intersecting gradients but I finally returned to the trusty 
crackle pattern modified with form <1,.3,0>.  In the museum there are 
some surfaces that look more like POV crackle than they do like carved 
surfaces.  So in theory it should work.  I think the problem might be 
that I was trying for the extreme shallowness of the tool marks in the 
photo reference rather than something deeper and more obvious.

I theory, I should also have improved on the random surface marking with 
some varied but classic use of the dents pattern.  The finer texture 
effects you are seeing in the earlier version is mostly a dense wood 
pattern, with quite a lot of turbulence, faintly averaged into the 
overall normal.

Oh well, life in the lower strata. ;)  Thanks for keeping me honest.

I was up until maybe five this morning, Poving of course, then was 
wakened by a call from a temping agency around 9:30.  Fish the turtles 
out of the bath tub, wash and on with the interview suit, down there by 
10:30 only to be told that the recruiter had made a 'mistake' calling me 
in.  I think I was being told that they'd really meant to loose my 
resume but this newbie didn't know that.

It's a brand new day :)

Post a reply to this message