4 replies to this topic

[johnmac]

Hello everyone

I'm an artist and I wanted to transform some photographs of human bodies into map format - ie with contours, elevation, water(one of the bodies is in the bath), etc

Anybody got any ideas where I would start or any good software that might help me out.

I normally work with Photoshop.

Any help much apprieciated

J.

[Martin Gamache]

Artists Lilla Locurto and Bill Outcault have done similar things, you may want to check out their work. I discovered their work in a new book on map design discused elsewhere on this board (Making Maps A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS). Other artists have taken very wide angle photos and used reprojection to remove distorsions and transform the image (Andreas Gursky's 99 Cent is by far the best example of this)

In theory you would take your photos, georeference them to an imaginary grid and reproject them. There are alot of GIS/Remote sensing software that can do this. You can also map images to 3d objects using software like Bryce and probably many others. I have never done this, but this is how I would approach it.

mg

[frax]

im not sure johnmac wants/needs to re-project the images, I think you want to use them as a backdrop and put contour curves etc on top, right?

I don't think it is that realistic to use any fancy GIS/RS software for this, unless you partner with someone that has access to those tools I would do all of this in Illustrator.

Since you haven't scanned the 3d shape of things (I assume) you would have to make up those contour lines. If you have access to GIS software: what you can do is to create a "homemade digital elevation model" in photoshop. Use grayscale on the map as a backdrop, and have things lighter where things are higher up, and darkest at the bottom, out of that it is possible to calculate contour lines.

[Hans van der Maarel]

There's been some discussion on a similar problem (model of a face) over on the Map-Mac list recently. Several suggestions were brought up/

Probabely the most low-tech one of the bunch was:

Though the gee-whiz methods are interesting (and cleaner), for a one-off you might investigate having a life-mask of the person made in plaster of Paris, putting it in a pan facing up, and covering it with a dark liquid.  Photograph it from above, then lower the liquid a centimeter at a time and rephotograph.  Use Adobe Streamline or similar software to make the light/dark boundaries into vector paths.

(by Dennis McClendon).

[benbakelaar]

Can't give you help with MAC, but if you were to do it with PC, you could accomplish it with the following freeware:

POVRay (www.povray.org)
MORay (you will see link to moray on the above site)

There might even be a MAC version of povray, not sure... but basically, like someone else mentioned, these are raytracers and 3d modeling software. you would get a standard 3d model of a human body, and then lay the photograph on top of the model, so to speak. you would have to manipulate either the person being photographed to be in the same pose as the 3d model, or you could use software such as Poser to manipulate the 3d model itself..

my question is whether your intended outcome is for the human body to appear more like a traditional map (with isolines as contours) or the opposite?

Hello everyone

I'm an artist and I wanted to transform some photographs of human bodies into map format - ie with contours, elevation, water(one of the bodies is in the bath), etc

Anybody got any ideas where I would start or any good software that might help me out.

I normally work with Photoshop.

Any help much apprieciated

J.

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