Tek wrote:
> It might be that the water's too blue, I've faked the sky to be blue 
> overhead with only clouds at the horizon, to make the water reflect more 
> blue than it would on a cloudy day. That was just an attempt to make the 
> water look more like you'd expect, rather than realistic...
> 
> I'll do a test render without this trickery (though it looks far too grey in 
> the low-res preview).
> 
I think it is not just about what is expected.  There is an emotive 
juxtaposition.  The water is beautiful with clear, aqua, tints 
attractive to the eye, but still, it is utterly indifferent to the 
sinking boat it envelops,...envelops with barely a shrug.  A hueless, 
pasty countenance for the water would produce a different result. 
Repellent, awful, opaque.  You would need a greater sense of mayhem and 
drama surrounding the boat as it goes under.  Right now the waves are 
like the claws of a beautiful cat when it suddenly betrays its feral nature.

You picture is an astounding technical advance, in direct line from that 
original piece by Alberto, that showed us the astonishing potential of 
isosurfaces.  But there is something to your title too.  You signal 
"artistic", probably in the sense of "stylized".  And I think it is 
true.  Stylizations, are always to some degree, a meditation on the 
effect of stylization.  Van Gogh paintings for instance.

I have always loved marine paintings, and I never cared a hoot about the 
boat.  The boat is rarely more than an excuse to do water.  And how a 
particular painter stylized his water is always the fascinating thing. 
For a stylization it must be, because water is never still for even a 
moment.  Even the airborne, gobbing, foam caught in a stop-action photo 
of a crashing wave is not water as the human eye sees it.  So an artist 
must sneak up on the reality of water.  It is often a matter of focusing 
on one of the aspects of water, perhaps its solidity is emphasized, or 
its transparency, its power, its motion, or its turbulence.  Often there 
is an attempt to understand its turbulent mayhem according to more 
regular patterns. The focus on one representative aspect of the subject 
allows for coherency and homogeneity within the limits of the technique 
used. If this one aspect is observed and translated correctly the 
portrayal is believed.  Necessarily these attempts push the limits of 
the available tool.  Painters employ the effects of paint application: 
measured strokes of brush, impastoed workings of the knife, delicately 
laid in tints, splatters, or wiped back effects of the rag.  With water, 
tromp l'oeil is really not possible, (except perhaps with animation,) 
for a still picture of water is automatically artificial.  With the 
painting of water we have always accepted the role of stylization, in 
the sense of a knowing exploitation of paint application, together with 
the judicious focusing of observation, in the artist's attempt to sneak 
up on realism.

Raytracing, has been dominated by the technical hunt. It is a hunt based 
in the paradigm of the subject-first-modeled-then-viewed, and it has 
mostly allowed stylization only where the separation from realism is 
clear and safe. It is acceptable, for instance, with animated cartoons, 
which emphasize gesture, or perhaps with alien landscapes or beast-like 
figures, where what is "real" is a hybrid fantasy anyway.  Your picture 
approaches a queasier area where tromp l'oeil results are sometimes 
possible.  A liquid surface rippled by concentric, even interfering, 
sine waves can be modeled directly, while the turbulated patterns of 
tree bark can only be simulated.  Simulated closely, albeit, close 
enough for tromp l'oeil even, but within the result there lurks the 
conceptual tripwire that it is not exact, that what we relegate to 
randomness may yet be a form we do not recognize.

Your portrayal of water, here, flirts with a difficult progression.  The 
transparency has a tromp l'oeil result. Same with the fractal peaking of 
wavelets and dissolving foam textures especially in select areas. The 
longer roll of crests and troughs is believable.  But the steepening 
crests topped with foam are a harder sell. And yet they are the main 
attraction.  They are also the most difficult to observe and remember 
from real experience.  They have a conceptual presence in our minds 
which can be quite tangible but which may differ markedly from their 
appearance in reality.  The reality is motion, not stopped motion. 
Steep waves "heave", "build", "boil", "churn", "break", "pitch", "roll", 
"burst", "topple", etc. The look of this as stopped action is a 
construct.  Your picture asks us to suspend our personal concepts, and 
accept your synthesis of how this might look.  We must abandon the hope 
of complete illusion while integrating its partial successes with the 
more speculative parts of you synthesis. Is this the new "stylized"? 
Can we accept the "artistic" outcome even as we relish the technical 
underpinnings.  Can we make the small step which substitutes fractal for 
wave, and enjoy the real illusion of transparent liquid, even as we are 
aware that we are doing both?  I think I can.

Post a reply to this message