Black and white

On the technical side, I wanted to show the power of shading which answers the question "what happens if one considers every microscopic element of the surface, even though they cannot be seen with the naked eye?". Or "what is the difference between velvet, vinyl, metal, and skin?".

The only way to achieve anything related to shading is by using shaders which are common in most rendering software. Since they are now available for hardware, the rendering of that scene can be performed in real time. One can get this exact look&feel for games, etc, because it is rendered using OpenGL (through ARB programming). So one can experience real-time fine tuning for everything except the adaptive shadow blur, and depth of field. All features included, it needs 5 minutes to render in the worst case.

What people usually use is one shader per material, but what I programmed instead is a single shader for getting every material depicted in the picture. It has 26 parameters, but can simulate almost any possible material. What we see in the image accounts for only a subset.

The main light shadowing is automatic, but there are three point lights to simulate the lighting from the window. I didn't want them to cast shadows, because it would need too many more samples for continuous shadowing. So ambient occlusion is a complete fake. I used shaded rectangles as shadow patches. There is no automatic generation though. I had to create every soft shadow on the floor, and on the walls, one by one for each object.

The glasses are fake too. They are rendered using shading only. No actual reflection nor refraction there.

Overall the dress was the most difficult thing to do. I took me two days of programming only for getting this progressive transparency.

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On the concept side, I didn't want to show anything. You must trust me on this, because all I wanted to exploit was the shading. I knew that whatever indoor scene setup would have looked absolutely nice.

Even though I think this section should be hidden during the reviewing process, I must tell the truth about the concept. To actually get to this result on purpose was impossible for me because I don't have much modeling tools. The first step was risky right away: the girl!

When I found her only one week ago, I've felt in love. I wish to give special thanks to Qiao Jin for this particular model published on the Dassault website (http://www.3dvia.com/home.php) only two months ago. Of course she was plain gray then, but I said to myself, OK suppose some kind of a mirror, then "black and white" would do a nice contrast, and that was it. Any environment would do it, and I wasn't looking for anything else, I swear.

What I did afterwards was simply browsing 3D models and 2D textures all over the web. I selected the ones most suitable for the topic (and not for a clear concept I had in mind), and randomly put them ANYWHERE in the scene. The fruit bowl for example had nothing to do with the topic, but I knew it would look pretty good. However, in no way was I expecting to use the bowl itself in the concept. It was just a decoration, like everything else!

Since I don't really have the tools for high-end modeling yet, I must rely mostly on public-domain models which all have problems somewhere (that is why they are free). Thus I never think of a concept that would require very specific geometries.

Like a girl holding up a glass. Unless I could find anything, I cannot currently draw my concept on modeling.

The exact same thing happened regarding the pictures. I didn't make any of these pictures, and they were (again) randomly selected and integrated in the scene without any intention whatsoever. The book, the images of the book, etc., everything came from random Google queries!

At some point, I realized what was happening, some scenario was building up by itself... the image was completed to about 90%. Of course I chose the images (angel-devil, cats, etc), because I considered them surprisingly great for my black&white concept, but I also found that the ORDER (from right to left) seemed to relate something. I said to myself "are they the same duet all the time with a progression?"... And while there was still nothing on the left side, I looked very carefully from the devil-angel to the cats, then to the main scene (the girls), I figured out the pattern (the connection!), and I was looking for some last image of the sequence on the leftmost wall. It was the very first intentional query. This time only I was looking for something very specific to matching up a concept coming from nowhere.

Then I typed "opposites" in the Google box for image search, and I got to the perfect front-side picture (http://hemelsgroen.nl/opposites ) in the first page of Google results. Try the search for yourself to testify, it is the 8th image.

I was about to faint and kept saying "that's impossible!" for minutes... the climax of the story is also the climax of the story's story! What a completely amazing picture for my purpose, the original was even black&white, but I had to change the white to flesh color. Overall that was the only cheating!

Everything else had to be driven directly by God.

I figured the whole thing out after the final rendering only, when I started to write the description above. I didn't know there was only one guy and one girl there, and I didn't have to change one iota of the result, for all models, pictures and colors matched perfectly all the way through.

The umbrellas and the raining luster link was also a pure coincidence, definitely unintentional and unexpected. In French, we use the very common expression "mettre de l'eau dans son vin" (literally "put some water in the wine"), which means "meet someone halfway" or "play the game by giving to the opponent a little bit of what he wants". That must have been the girls' mistake. They overused the umbrellas by protecting their wine all the time.

I know it sounds impossible, but I swear it happened that way. The red-and-yellow chair is another example. I was looking for ANY chair. Then I got to this very special chair with a girl, unexpected once again. I put whatever texture on it (some kind of a flag), and all lines fit perfectly to separate the girl in two, then to the shoulders, then to the wrists. It took me a few clicks, it worked perfect, first shot. But I didn't even know there was a meaning.

The only thing that has been added since the moment I knew the concept myself, is the purple book. We know the story comes from the green book, but what happened in the purple one might be left unsaid.