The "Harvest time" diary - Part 1

This "Making of" text deals with a picture called "Harvest time" and was written as a "diary" during the completion of the picture. This picture won the November-December 1999 round of the Internet Ray-Tracing competition (aka IRTC). The topic was "Gardens". It was made using the Superpatch 3.1a, a patch of POV-Ray managed by Ron Parker, later replaced by Megapov.

Note: the images shown in this text are quite inconsistent in term of quality (aliasing, color saturation, jpeg artefacts). This is due to the fact that they were rendered in different sizes with different quality settings during the making of the picture. They have been compressed in various ways (and several times) since and then resized and further processed.

It's been some weeks since the Gardens topic has been annouced, but I've just decided to enter the competition for the first time. What happens is that I've been working on the Genesis series and the topic is right on for a possible Eden picture. I've got a tree macro, a grass macro, a library full of animals from Zygote, and the ability to do uv mapping on them. I could do a "nature" picture, Douanier Rousseau style. But I'm not ready yet and managing thousands of plants could be a problem (I'm working on relatively low-end portable). For some time now, I've been thinking about making a classical-painting-style picture. I even tried a Virgin Mary in 1993, to no avail. I have done several "Marys" since (see La Maestà, or The Giant), but in another frame of mind. Another picture comes to mind, the cover of one of Gilbert Shelton's Freak Brothers books, the one called Grassroots, with the Fabulous Furry living on the top of a building, in some sort of open-air penthouse, with a garden. One last thing : architecture. I've already done pictures such as Mouseless, so not only I have some training in the organisation of a high-detail urban picture and I have also lots of already made materials. And I want Piranese too. Nathan O'Brien did an impressive Piranese image for the IRTC round of January 1999.

So I'm ready to go : Garden of Eden will feature some sort of concrete island, a pillar on top of which the garden will stand, with a tree, a deer (perhaps), and the famous couple (perhaps). There may be some monkeys too, since I got have chimps from Zygote. The pillar will be surrounded by a dark mongrel architecture, a mixture of old and new. Note that this is not a new idea : La Maestà and In the Jungle share this similar pattern of a solitary something in a claustrophobic environment, with somebody standing on it.

November 21-22, 1999

Building starts. First I create a general layout, a red box and a cyan & green "well". Not very satisfying, the perspective is so different from the draft, but it'll do for the moment.

I have the windows macro and buildings from previous pictures but there's a lot to do. So I spend a lot of time creating macros for various decorative elements and use them to create two test layers of windows. Hmmm. The well is likely to pose some lighting problems. The colours look wrong. Sepia or orange yellow would be fine, but I've used it over and over. I'll have a look at Brazil and see what colours director Terry Gilliam used.