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Decorated Easter Egg

small final egg (linked to larger image)

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     This egg was created using Painter and Ray Dream, both of which are made for both platforms (although Ray Dream may not be available nowadays).  First, a surface was created in Painter, then the image was used in a texture on a Ray Dream model, which was then rendered.  Finally, the image was fixed using a different raster image editor.

     In Painter, an image map of Easter egg decorations was created in 2D.  It consists of repeating patterns in friendly colors, laid out so that the top of the image would end up on the top end of the egg model.  The Apply Surface Texture effect was applied using the eggscape paper grain to provide an eggshell texture.

small texture image (linked to larger image)

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     In Ray Dream, the 2D image map was used as a surface image and as a bump map.  The egg itself was a sphere that got stretched in height only (yielding a prolate spheroid).  Then the Easter egg model was rendered.

     Even though the best Ray Dream settings for rendering, silhouette quality, and so on, were used, the edges of the egg have visible corners and projections.  The surface lighting is too dark, making the egg appear smooth instead of bumpy.  The highlight on the egg is so shiny that it wipes out the surface texture, unlike a real eggshell, which would still show roughness within a highlight.

small first rendering (linked to larger image)

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     To fix these problems could take quite some time in Ray Dream (adjust settings, render, repeat), and may never improve, so raster image editors come to our rescue yet again.

     In a raster editor, the egg was selected using an elliptical mask, which was then feathered slightly and then inverted.  The selection was enlarged just a bit to include the background and unwanted corners.  Then, the masked area was cleared, leaving a perfectly round egg (for more realism, noise could have been added to the mask/alpha channel border before clearing, making bumpy edges like a real egg would have).  Then the image brightness and contrast were adjusted (using Adjust Gamma in Photo-PAINT) until the texture map looked more like an eggshell surface texture.  Finally, some noise was added in the highlight area, to provide just a little bumpiness there (more visible in the original high-resolution print image than in this smaller web image).  Even so, there is significantly noticeable improvement of the image overall when compared to the initial rendering.

small final egg (linked to larger image)

Click to view larger image

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