Other Images

MORE TO COME LATER!

What about Water???

What is a boat without water?  Exactly....

    The Edmund Fitzgerald traveled many routes along the Great Lakes both loaded and unloaded.   Probably one of my favorite images of the Edmund Fitzgerald is the one at the left.  She is shown here downbound with her cargo hatches open, flags flapping in the breeze, crew probably hard at work, water calm except for the wake she is casting off.  It is just a gorgeous picture of the old girl doing her job proudly.

Creating the Water Effects

Multi layers and a combination of techniques
   
    Water has been a major pain to a lot of 3D artists.  I am no exception, having pulled my hair out more then once trying to get waves and wake to work correctly with each other in the same image.  Newer versions of Blender (2.57+) have started to add water modifiers, but at the time of these images, I was still using 2.49b due it being the last with the old style interface... anyway.  When I started looking at water, I knew I had to go to my old friend, Colin Lister.  Colin is considered by some in Blender circles as the "Guru of Water."  His animation "Conflict at Sea" pushed the boundaries of what could be done to show large bodies of water.  He is also one of the designers that is leading the way with water materials in 2.56/7.  Check Colin's website here.
 

    Using a combination of layers, I was able to create a stencil, bump, and suspension on a flat plane to give me the look of wake.






 

    Next I combined that with Colin's excellent water tutorial and came up with a nice looking water.  animated and ready to go...  Just add in my model of the Fitz so far and work on the details.  You will notice I used a sky globe in most of these images and some also include Ambient occulusion.