The "Harvest time" diary - Part 2

November 23-26, 1999

The stone balustrade is stolen from Mouseless and put on top of the first building. I'd like to add some flights of stairs too. A building with arches is stolen from the Streets of the Serengeti. I rewrite it as a macro, to be able to use it on other parts of the picture.

Then it's time for reorganisation. Now that the picture is heading forward in a precise way, there is a need for a proper #include structure, with the main file, the object files, the macro files and the test files neatly separated. All the textures are reduced to only three (a wall texture, a "trim" texture and a glass texture for the windows) for now, but it is obvious that a large amount of research will be dedicated to colours and texturing. I add the ground floor windows. A building from The Giant is incorporated and the "balustrade" macro is modified to accept an "angle" parameter so that stairs can be created.

On the right are two test renders and a ballpoint sketch.

gtsktch2.jpg (12690 octets)

November 27, 1999

One good, productive Saturday. First, the stairs are completed. A floor with an entrance is added. I want some sort of little tower but I save this for later. Two other buildings from Mouseless are inserted. The right wall is almost finished now. What's missing is another floor and, for the front wall, more detailed floors. Arches probably. And a little tower. Anyway, I now have something to work with. This almost finished work can be seen on the right.

What is really needed is proper lighting and texturing. I'm tired of programming objects anyway.

November 28, 1999

Part of the textures will come from Mouseless. For the colours, yellow is out, because there are already too much yellowish stuff in the Book of Beginnings. The general tone must be dark and cold, so it has to be some blue, grey, or even green, perhaps with some touches of warmer colours. But the real source of warmth will be the garden. First I fiddle with some greyish and bluish colours, but I quickly realise that the only way to achieve a good effect is the hard one : to have as many dim light sources as necessary instead of one or two big ones. Gilliam's Brazil gives me a very complex array of colours, from grey to blue, or from grey to yellow. On the right is one of these color tests.

November 30-December 2, 1999

The city is built, brick after brick. Another floor is added, on the right, with a new balustrade and cobblestones. Blue light fails again and is replaced by yellow. Then there are lots of small changes : the "trim" colour disappears, replaced by the wall textures. Cobblestones and sidewalks are added where they're needed. Two new floors with arches are put at the bottom. The lamps are now visible, with media halo and support structures made with height-fields, like in O Sonhador de Alfama. Below are two of them:

Lamp 1 Lamp2