"Down the Drain"

The Idea

It's a little too personal and too complicated to put here in words what's behind this image. The only thing I want to say is that the heart does NOT represent my ex-girlfriend as many would easily believe when you throw a heart into a picture. This image is about a friend.
Note that there are some physical impossibilities in this image: without a plug, there'd be no way to get a sink full of water like that. The vortex wouldn't be visible with so much water as well, it usually appears when there's much less water in it. The title "Down the Drain" has a meaning. The image isn't meant to be a photo, it's meant to say something.

The Objects

The faucet, sink, soap and waterdrop were modelled in Silo. The water is a combination of ripples and various spirals to model a pattern for a heightfield. The chain was made with a small script I wrote to align objects along a Bezier-Spline (one of my includes), and I hand-scripted a few rotation-thingies to make the chain lie in a believable manner.

The Lighting

A single area-light/spotlight light the scene. I've added a few lightgroups, mainly the soap to get a non-area-light on the subsurface-scattering to save rendertime, and another pointlight on the faucet for a highlight to seperate it more clearly from the black background.

Personal Note

I'd like to have some more cheerful moments to put into images. They've become rather rare lately.

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