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Primeval Beach

 

Primeval Beach

4/15/00

My first work with Bryce and Poser. The first frame of a large animation, this uses the sky and terrain features of Bryce. In addition, the figure is shaded with Bryce textures on top of the base Poser textures.

The trilobite was made in Carrara using the spline modeler.This was an interesting task which almost defeated me. I finally found that starting with the general shape of the trilobite from above and below, and then adding the points needed to create the segmentation was the easiest way to proceed.

A separate light was added for the sunset highlights on the beach, because the actual angle of the sun that allowed it to be in the frame didn't allow it to provide the fill light that I needed to add dimension to the beach, especially at certain angles in the animation. In addition, the default waves and the default reflectivity of the water used were altered to more correctly match what would be expected.

The use of the blue light was an attempt to make the original landscape somewhat more exciting in visual terms. A later development of this animation is expected to show it as the light cast from a nearby door.

The following are some selected frames (unfortunately, the whole animation is about 12 Mb, making it impractical to offer online) - note how the sun sets during the animation. Also, the clouds and ocean are animated (the ocean is an infinite plane, moved slowly past the island:

Early Frame Middle Frame Late Frame

Note how the extra fill works in the first and second of the above images, reminding us of the presence and location of the sun.

The following "Director's Camera" rendering of the face shows details of the texturing of hair, skin, eyebrows, lips, and some of the clothing of the Poser character used; texturing was also used to add wrinkles to the jeans.

Closeup

Unfortunately, my ambition to animate the Poser figure in Bryce was somewhat defeated by the alterations in import size produced by Bryce attempting to interpret the scale of multiple framed figures. I had intended to bring in all of the figures for all of the frames, and simply hide and reveal them (I still don't know if that's possible) or to create a variety of single frames and later assemble them into the animation. That remains a project for the future.

Copyright © 2004 by Mark Cashman (unless otherwise indicated), All Rights Reserved