October Entry: temple transformation

[Gamerprinter]

Lots of ideas brewing for this challenge, but first I have something special in mind for the main floor of the chapel area.

I want to experiment with mosaic tiled floors. Since this is a temple in transformation, I am leaving a remnant of the "original mosaic" partially removed with the "replacement mosaic" already in progress. Its a kind of cool way of showing a temple under transformation, I thought.

The photo to the left is Elenora of Toledo 1550 - although alittle modern for my tastes, the lines in her face are very distinct, which helps when converting the image with a mosaic filter. Since the mosaic filter will "pixelate" the image, there will be loss of detail - but that helps with what I'm going for anyway.

I imported the image into Xara Xtreme. I used a pre-installed Photoshop Plug-in called "alien skin xenofex 2 > classic mosaic." I used a the smallest tile setting of 4 pixels, and a 50% grout using a browninsh gray as grout color. This is the second photo.

From within Xara I used a freehand drawing tool to cut a line along the edges of tiles on the face to remove part of mosaic. The line extended beyond the edges of the image, then I selected "Arrange/Combine/Slice" tool to cut the portion of the image away. This is the third image.

Finally I found a demon photo, some marble texture and a tiled floor texture to create the final image.

This is the main temple floor... next onto walls!

[ravells]

Nice concept! I like it!

[RPMiller]

Yup! Neat idea!

[Gamerprinter]

I plan to do much of this design in 3D.

So I can get some really nice shadow effects - like window shadow and sunlight stream from outer hall way, through doors onto floor. The marbled area of the floor will have square columns with fancy footings. I want proper shadowing of columns on floor from all light sources.

I might put a couple candelabras just above the "top" of the mosaic image, as the altar will sit in a niche beyond the boundries of the main chapel floor, as well as unlit niches in sides and "bottom".

I'm even thinking of creating some scaffolding on one side of the monastary, where the "new statues" are being lifted from the ground to be brought in through upper windows into chapel. Yes I'm putting the chapel in the 2nd or 3rd (?) floor, in photo.

Oh and to be really dark, look for an on ground cememtary with all the graves open!!! Lots of work to do.

[Robbie]

I definitely like where you're going with this...and 3d is my language...so I'm glad to see ya speakin it. Some good GI and AO would be nice

I really like the mosaic tile transformation though...thats a nice touch indeed.

[Gamerprinter]

OK, no 3D yet, I'm still using Xara. I couldn't get what I wanted in 3D. The doorway light/shadow was created in Xara, I just placed a polygon filled black with a 40% transparency applied and an 11 pixel edge feather.

Instead of pillars, I decided on small platforms where statues will go. The upright and broken statues will be 3D, as well as some boxes of tiles, a trowel and straight hoe used to remove the other mosaic tiles. I also plan to have a small pile of loose tiles as well.

Image so far...