Digital Rendering Process

Crop Circle Rendering - How the drawing was created
 

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Digital Rendering Process

 

The Process of Rendering the Silbury Hill Crop Circle Image

Commentary by Paul Jacobsen
 

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The digital rendering process for this crop circle rendering was created in Xara X, a vector software package which means it is comprised of mathematically defined geometric lines and shapes that can be filled and textured in any number of ways. An example of this process is below.

Vector software is essentially like drafting in AutoCAD rather than painting or drawing in PhotoShop and other 'bitmap' image applications. Bitmap applications and vector applications both create images but in very different ways.

[ Also see Screen versus Print Images differences, and a Vector Graphics Demonstration for more information]




* Blue, green and red lines are guides which were eventually used to 'slice'  the basic shapes into
the correct segments to assemble the final image.

[Also see a vector graphics demonstration]

 

The Aztec / Mayan glyphs in the bezel rings repeated four times and with vector software it was possible to create one pattern-group, then replicate and rotate it 90° into place in the outer rings.

The wing patterns (reminiscent of those representing the Egyptian God Ra)  followed the same procedure except that repeating, smaller ellipses were requires to form the layers of the wings. Those sections then had to be sliced into their smaller segments. (See example outside of the bezel.) After one pattern was created a duplicate was rotated 180° to form the opposing pattern. The element groups of the wings then had to be ungrouped in order to place the segments in the proper front / back placement to create the proper overlap / layering. The final stage was simply selecting each individual shape and line and applying the appropriate 3D effect to form the final image.

A Personal Note about Crop Circle Creation:

As a professional, the challenges were poignant to me in considering the possible process of physically creating such a pattern in the crops! What struck me was the thought and experimentation required to get the layout and positioning correct, followed by the process of deciding which segments needed to be removed in order to get the relief to look right.

Furthermore, I considered that I was doing this from a bird's eye view and that any errors, minor or otherwise, were correctable and not evident in the final image. As all this sunk in, I tried to visualize how a group of pranksters could possibly create such an image in the dark, unseen, at ground level, with such precision, with no errors (since their errors would not be correctable as mine were) and without leaving 'collateral evidence' such as footprints!

Over the years, as open minded as I am and therefore accepting the possibility of these patterns being created by 'alien means', I found myself, through this process, absolutely unable to doubt that these patterns could never have been created by human means ...no matter how clever those humans might be!

 

    Rendering based on Hurricane Ivan

Click image to go to detail pages
 

Additional information at www.earthfiles.com

 


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Last Updated - 08/17/2008 02:07 PM

Digital Rendering Process