Rod Seffen
07-03-2008, 01:19 AM
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2288367,00.html
Directed by Peter Greenaway and cinematographer Reinier van Brummelen, it's been showing on a copy of the painting in Milan for several weeks now, and permission was finally given to project on the real painting in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie on Monday night (30 June)
The small rendered video showing a clip of it there doesn't give the slightest appreciation of the real experience of course, seeing the huge, and now badly decayed and forlorn, mural come to life in 3d. It's getting great reviews from the people who were actually there, and since they don't allow many people in there and it's only a 10 minute show, only a few hundred people will ever get to see it. It was a one-off, because the real mural is so heavily protected these days, it's amazing they ever let it happen once, and it took a lot of persuading with the Italian authorities, but it's still running on the copy not far away.
I did all the modeling for this project. I basically created the entire painting as a 3d sculpture, using Mudbox, and it was then animated in Lightwave by Reinier, and this is then superimposed over the painting using several projectors set up in the refectory.
Here was an early WIP screengrab of the modeling process.
http://www.pixelwerks.be/images/ScreenShot065.jpg
It was tricky getting the right balance of detail for this, since it was to have the painting projected over it and the lighting animated, so I didn't want the model details to be overbearing on what is now a quite flat and faded painting. Every detail had to match up perfectly with the painting of course. A lot of it is now decayed and missing, which also meant I had to fill in a lot of blanks in the modeling process.
There are already plans for further paintings to be brought to life in this way.
Directed by Peter Greenaway and cinematographer Reinier van Brummelen, it's been showing on a copy of the painting in Milan for several weeks now, and permission was finally given to project on the real painting in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie on Monday night (30 June)
The small rendered video showing a clip of it there doesn't give the slightest appreciation of the real experience of course, seeing the huge, and now badly decayed and forlorn, mural come to life in 3d. It's getting great reviews from the people who were actually there, and since they don't allow many people in there and it's only a 10 minute show, only a few hundred people will ever get to see it. It was a one-off, because the real mural is so heavily protected these days, it's amazing they ever let it happen once, and it took a lot of persuading with the Italian authorities, but it's still running on the copy not far away.
I did all the modeling for this project. I basically created the entire painting as a 3d sculpture, using Mudbox, and it was then animated in Lightwave by Reinier, and this is then superimposed over the painting using several projectors set up in the refectory.
Here was an early WIP screengrab of the modeling process.
http://www.pixelwerks.be/images/ScreenShot065.jpg
It was tricky getting the right balance of detail for this, since it was to have the painting projected over it and the lighting animated, so I didn't want the model details to be overbearing on what is now a quite flat and faded painting. Every detail had to match up perfectly with the painting of course. A lot of it is now decayed and missing, which also meant I had to fill in a lot of blanks in the modeling process.
There are already plans for further paintings to be brought to life in this way.