 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
I was browsing my friend Jim's (FantaSee Designs) web page, drooling over the Bryce images he had. One was a dark sunset with a sea and rocks, and this slightly curved mirror slab. It looked cool. But, I thought, what would be even more cool is if it were a chrome figure reflecting the landscape.
Bryce 2, Ray Dream Designer 4, Adobe Photoshop 3
Well, this WAS going to be one whole picture. But, for some reason, Bryce kept choking on my DXF wings and losing some feathers. I mean, it imported... after a while. But then there were feathers missing! Sheesh!
So. Bryce water, Bryce sky, and a rock duplicated and scattered. Piece of cake.
This is a Poser figure, exported as a DXF to RDD, and given
a blue-silver shader. I built the wings in RDD, also, and gave them
the same shader. The wing cuff is one solid piece. The cross
section has a rounded end (the wing strut) and a curved trailing section
with folds for the feathers to tuck into. After shaping the cuff with
an envelope, I added umpteen little in-between nodes, to mold the lower edges
of the cuff feathers. (Note: Make sure you don't do this first, or
you'll go nuts trying to adjust all the little nodes on the extrusion path.
Oy!)
There are two types of feather. The pinfeathers are circles
and flattened cross sections to form the shaft and feathery part of the feathers.
(The RDD clip art feather is a flat silhouette extrusion, but I like
the end-to-end extrusion better. It gives the shaft better dimensionality,
and it reflects better, too!) The secondary feathers are the same circle
and flattened oval cross section, but the extrusion path is bent in a Z shape
to create the illusion of two rows of feathers with just one piece.
Each feather was duplicated, rotated and sized into place. I
grouped the feather clusters and nudged them into the folds of the wing cuff.
The easiest way to do this is to make the two pieces different colours
(like red and green), then push the feathers through the cuff until they
show out the other side. Then nudge them back a tad. RDD5's collision
detection should make this a bit easier... But I haven't tried it yet.
I put the figure and wings together, and positioned them in
the production frame. Getting a decent reflection was a pain and a
half! I tried using the Bryce image as a reflection, but ended up using
just a bi-gradient of blue and red. Well, okay, maybe having a chrome
reflective winged figure would be too complicated for an image (instead of
a big ol' mirror slab).
I rendered the figure to a PSD file with a mask, then opened
it in 'Shop to paste the figure over the background. Added text, and
ta da...!
copyright: ©1997 All rights reserved. You may download this image for viewing on your computer. You may NOT print it, upload it anywhere, use it for a commercial or non-commercial illustration or companion piece, place it (or a link to it) on your web page, without requesting and obtaining PRIOR permission from the artist. For contact details, click here.
price list: This image is not currently available as a print. However, if you are interested in obtaining a print, please let me know. It will print at about 3 x 5". For contact details, click here.