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I had a lot of reference images but the trouble was to find the right proportions since verisimilitude was the key. So, using more or less detailed pictures of NY citizens waiting for the "Walk" sign, I tried to estimate the relative heights and diameters of the various parts of the lamp post models, while keeping the models as parameterised as possible for poetic license. The head, trunk and foot of the post were modelled in sPatch and then exported to DXF to be converted to the regular mesh format.
| Particularly difficult to model was the "Walk/Don’t walk" box, whose precise geometry kept escaping me, in spite of numerous photos of the device. I wanted the thing to be as flexible as possible, so that I could create various "corner" lamp post with the same basic model. This proved to be very useful, and worth the sweating. The "don’t walk " image itself was first painted in Picture Publisher. The effect was good, but not that good. Then I found a real-life image of it, and the effect was immediate. Instead of a regular POV picture, I had something that looked real, for a very good reason: it’s hard to beat reality. |
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| A good deal of time was also spent
scanning or retrieving photos of real NY street signs, and then correcting them for
parallax, colour saturation and contrast. In a few cases, I had to recreate them from
scratch when the original image was too bad or too distorted. Here are the lamp posts and
traffic lights. The signs colours are very saturated, otherwise the fog would have killed
them. The source and images maps for the lamps are given here (gt_nylamp.zip). |
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Comparison of the two "Don’t walk" lights, with the final one on the
right. [
