Chicken Egg Problem

[compilerbitch]

I boiled 7 eggs in total, several of which had their tops chopped off in order to get something that looked right. Next, I photographed this egg with the 4x5, twice due to limited depth of field (once focussed on the front edge, again on the back edge). I also shot a hard-boiled egg cut in half as a source of textures.

Next step was to build a Lightwave model that matched the egg as closely as possible. This then got cloned and rescaled a couple of times to make the inner surface of the shell and the outer surface of the yolk. I then drew a jigsaw piece and extruded it so it was deeper than the egg, and nudged it into place carefully. A bit of careful constructive solid geometry then gave me an egg with a cutout in it and also the piece that got cut out. Both of these were then taken into the rendering package and 'artfully arranged' on top of a large, flat medum grey surface. Lighting was fairly simple, just a distant source, radiosity enabled but raytraced shadows disabled. Lots of texture hacking next to get the surfaces right, then an hour of rendering.

Finally, everything was composited in Photoshop and tweaked in the usual way.

This is going to be my entry for the 'creative' section of the Peninsula Camera Club on Tuesday. Wish me luck!

Edit: I updated the image to make the left hand drip look like it was in shadow more.

Comments

[pinguhateseng.livejournal.com]

Damned impressive :) I'm not sure what you mean by "lightwave model" but the rest I think I get. I think.

Wow.

The more I look the more impressed I am :)

[fg.livejournal.com]

kind of makes me want to hard boil an egg and get out an exacto knife...     :)

[darcydodo]

That's... pretty insane! :)

[new-brunette.livejournal.com]

That's really very impressive!

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Brilliant!

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Woah.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Lightwave is a 3D modelling package.

[toothycat]

Good luck! That's excellent, though - I seriously thought it was a real, physical 3D puzzle at first... ^^;;

[dave-t-lurker.livejournal.com]

Impressive.

The drip on the left side looks slightly less 'real'.

Thanks for the info on how you did it as well.

[sigje.livejournal.com]

the drip on the left side is cooked (i think) .. but excellent work!!

Fixed it...

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

I laboriously fixed it (created a new layer, fiddled with it to make it look in shadow, painted a layer mask, then created an extra layer and did lots of fiddly hand touchups).

I knew about it but was too lazy -- obviously since two people picked up on it I had to sort it out.

Thanks for the feedback though!

[void150.livejournal.com]

I love it!

[catseatdogs.livejournal.com]

That kicks serious, serious booty. Like you = ninja. Booty = kicked.

[nassus.livejournal.com]

Wow - that's awesome. rysmiel pointed to your entry.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

That's very cool