> [...] but for animals, humans, and many manmade things a mesh-based modeler – or at least the use of third-party meshes – is essentially a requirement.

That was/is not true. It could be even a CAD modeler. In fact, in the 90's, before the advent of subdivison surfaces (sds) in VFX production, everything you saw in blockbuster movies that was organic was NURBS patches. E.g. the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park". Usually modeled in Alias PowerAnimator and then animated in Softimage.

Nowadays you can choose between polygon meshes, sds, T-splines also signed-distance-based modeling for organic stuff. In fact, even then you could do organic modeling from SDF primitives using the Oranica[1] modeler.

There were also many cheap or even free modeleres that supported bezier patch modeling at the time. Bezier/B-spline patches modelers were accessible to everyone on Windows and Mac OS at the time. And there were many renderers that could render those without artifact. I.e. REYES[2]-based.

You may have to mesh the SDF for further work (and then maybe render a Loop sds if you want a high order surface at render time). So mesh-based being the only choice was neither true when "The wet bird" was produced nor is it now.

I ran a small CGI shop (five people) a few years before this image was produced. We used Real3D/Alias PowerAnimator with a custom pipeline to do organic modeling with B-spline patches and rendering with PhotoRealistic RenderMan for Windows. No polygons were ever created (or harmed) producing any of the images we were paid for.

So yeah, the humans in that image were polgon meshes from Poser and exported to POV but that was just what the artist knew/choose.

[1] https://archive.org/details/organica-12 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reyes_rendering

Pardon the slight inaccuracy. With "mesh-based modeler" I simply meant a GUI modeler, no matter what the primitives used are. (I would consider a model made of many X-spline patches still a "mesh", for the record.) But my point was that some type of modeler is a requirement for creating many photorealistic shapes; nobody is going to make a plausible human programmatically by composing geometry out of primitives like spheres, cones, and boxes. Or even blobs/metaballs or isosurfaces.

> [...] nobody is going to make a plausible human programmatically by composing geometry out of primitives like spheres, cones, and boxes. Or even blobs/metaballs or isosurfaces.

Actually that is exactly what people did in the aformentioned Organica modeler in the 90's. Yes, using a GUI modeling app but that is not a requirement here.

Some vids that show what is possible with a text editor and not much effort (if you have a lib of ready-made SDF components you string together in code):

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/3lsSzf https://www.shadertoy.com/view/WsSBzh

So yeah, I'd disagree with the 'nobody'. I wrote shaders for blokcbutser VFX as part of my job for over a decade. We regularly did some very complex SDF stuff there simply because we had to.

I think Gilles Tran especially would be the kind of person who'd do that sort of stuff[1] if the object in question was central enough to the image.

Which the motion blurred human figure in the "The wet bird" was not.

[1] http://www.oyonale.com/modeles.php?lang=en&page=6

Your insistence on using the word "nobody" there is an absolute without evidence. You underestimate the visualization capabilities of savants. For my 3D game prototype, I created all of the meshes programmatically and wrote *and debugged* a mesh-slicing algorithm using only visualization in my own mind. Mostly I did indeed use primitives like spheres, cones, and boxes. Granted, huge caveats - I never finished a game from the prototype, and the meshes involved weren't that complicated; I was modeling imaginary robots not people.

It's painful for me to use GUI or CAD tools because they're so much slower and less capable than the Dall-E image generator/CAD modeler/Star Trek Holodeck I have inside my own brain. This is in some ways limiting, analogous to a mathematician refusing to learn to use a computer. Nevertheless back to your point, I'm fairly certain I could model a plausible human programmatically from geometry primitives, but I won't claim to until I try. However what I am certain of is somebody can.

I would call confusing the "what" with the "how" a "slight inaccuracy" a tad frivolous.

And I mean that in a very caring way as handn't wasted 5mins writing a reply to you if this was as obvious as you try to make it sound.

I am sorry for the confusion, but I did think it was pretty clear that the important part of "mesh modeler" in my comment was the word "modeler" because in the context it was used as the opposite to building scenes by writing code. I did genuinely forget that there exist modelers that work on splines rather than triangle meshes, but I don't really see the distinction as very important in this specific context.

>Programmatically composing mathematical primitives does only get you so far if your goal is to create art relatable to humans.

Of coarse, that is one of those weak areas you have to work around and ultimately helps define the style of povray, that incredible pathos of all those images devoid of people beyond the implied. This thread got me to install povray and start playing with it again. There is a fairly large speed increase, rendered the diffuse-back sample scene and it took 8 minutes, took hours on my old T42.