Bill and Grace
Original Post: 23 May 2013
Posted Here: 1 December 2017
Bill and Grace are a pair of American Crows from my short story, The Last Acorn. Bill is a typical crow, but is missing a foot. Grace, Bill's wife, is a rare, white crow.
I wanted to model the pair in Poser Pro 2012, so I purchased the Songbird ReMix: Corvus corvus from DAZ 3D.
For Bill, I selected each part of his left foot and unchecked the three items in the Properties tab that made them visible.
No white crows came with the set, so I removed all the texture maps for feathers, bill, and leg/foot. This gave Grace white plumage. She is not an albino, so I did not change her eyes. I colored the beak and legs/feet with pale pink Diffuse color.
In the scene I created, Grace is accompanied by a more distant Bill flying over the back lawn of the Warren family. I rendered a large image of Grace, a small image of Bill, and inserted them into a photo of what is actually somewhere in the Cheekwood Botanical Gardens in Nashville, Tennessee.
I thought the result was successful until I looked at a full-screen image. Grace would probably have looked fine had she been as "distant" as Bill. But up close, she didn't look right. She wasn't glossy, like plastic, but her feathers, especially on her head and neck, were very distinct--like you find on those "realistic" bird figurines that you see in stores. Real birds have feathers, but, except for flight or tail feathers, they are hardly noticeable. Not so with my Grace.
I thought perhaps the problem was due to removal of the texture maps. So, I loaded each map into Photoshop and inverted the image: black became white. I saved these new images and used them as texture maps. Unfortunately, there was no change.
The scene was rescued by my wonderful wife. She asked if there was some way to soften the edges of the feathers. There wasn't, at least not in Poser. But I loaded Grace into Photoshop and used the Blur Tool on the feathers. I think Grace came out looking pretty realistic.
Keep reading/keep writing - Jack
