In the Spring of 1998 Wake Forest University Theater will present Tartuffe in the Scales Fine Arts Center Theater. This theater was the last Jo Mielziner designed. It features a steeply raked audience area that provides audiences with a good view of the stage floor. There is no architectural top to the proscenium arch and the proscenium sides are composed of two parallel units, the inner parts being adjustable to narrow the width of the arch opening.
The following design for this production was modeled in StrataVision 3d Version 5.0. This latest version incorporates the basic features of Strata's StudioPro 1.75+ (a.k.a. Blitz). This application, although not as powerful as their higher-end program StudioPro 2, is suitable for theater scenographic modeling. Most designers, such as myself, do not use the more sophisticated animation features of StudioPro for creating stage models. Since the rendering options of version 5 are improved over earlier versions of StrataVision 3d, I recommend this program to any scenographer who does not wish to pay the significantly higher price for features they will not use regularly.
Most scenographers who make scenic renderings of a setting most often limit their work to one view: a perspective view taken usually from back-row center of the audience area. Here is such a view of the Tartuffe setting:
Tartuffe: Perspective View
One of the most important advantages for computer scenographic modelmakers is, however, that once the basic model is constructed and has appropriate texture-maps attached to its surfaces, other views can be rendered with little additional effort; it is simply a matter of changing the camera view (or, alternatively, placing additional cameras into the model at other positions). This allows the scenographer to provide the director, or others associated with the production, with useful spatial information lacking in traditional perspective views.
The figures shown in the above view are not the original ones created in the 3-D model, but are costume images taken from a Planet Art CD-ROM disk called COSTUMES that were composited in Photoshop 4.01 over the StrataVision 3d PICT rendering.The figures shown in the Front Elevation View below are merely simplified 3D objects in basic human form.
The next three images show views of the setting that provide useful information not easily obtained from the perspective view.
Tartuffe: Front Elevation View
Tartuffe: High Angle View
Tartuffe: Birdseye View
The view shown below is an isometric rendering (a useful feature of both StrataVision 3d and StudioPro) that shows relationships of objects to stage space without perspective distortion.
Tartuffe: Isometric View
