CSCI 140 Final Gallery

3-D Computer Modeling 
CSCI 140 Fall 2002

Wittman, Aaron

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Project
Aaron WittmanFinal Scene
High Mountain Home
 
Inspiration:
The inspiration for my project came from bluegrass music. I wanted to create a scene that embodied all the tunes that I grew up listening to. I also wanted to do a nature landscape scene because I felt it was much more difficult than a technical scene, which could contain many geometric objects, and not as many curved surfaces. In contrast to my last hectic space scene, I wanted a peaceful place.

Procedure:
With this decided I sat down and did some sketches of different layouts I could use. Although I recognized at the onset the difficulty of using water in my scene, I wanted to challenge my skills and learn how to use Lightwave better, and water is an essential part in many scenes. So I decided I wanted a river with a waterfall.

I also decided that because so many of my favorite songs have to do with little cabins, I would include a small cabin. I sat down and sketched different cabins, trying to find one I liked, and came up with the one in the scene.

I decided I wanted a dynamic sunset happening when my rendering was done, so I incorporated a nice sky with some clouds into my sketches.

Having all my items laid out in a general way, I began to search the web for tutorials and textures to enable the modeling of my idea.
 
 
 
Objects
TerrianAaron
SkyAaron
CabinAaron
StreamAaron
 
Problems and Solutions:
My first challenge was to create terrain. I had a few different approaches to this task, because there were a few different tutorials. First I tried was a creating a displacement map in Photoshop, importing it into Lightwave, and applying it to a surface. I felt I did not have enough control to create the layout I wanted, and after a few frustrating sessions I abandoned this approach. Then I stumbled upon a program called Terragen, basically it creates terrain that can be sent to Lightwave. After an afternoon playing around with different settings, I had a suitable terrain.

I wanted the cabin to be in a green valley, so I went looking for a way to make some grass. Immediately I stumbled upon a great plug-in called Sasquatch. Basically it can be used to create hair, grass, or anything else stringy. It is a tricky tool though, and I still haven't mastered it by any means. At first my grass looked pretty pitiful, even when I followed the tutorials for it, but after diligent practice and repetition of the tutorial I eventually got it down well enough to complete the project.

To create the sky I used a plug-in that came with Lightwave called SkyTracer. I put in exactly the coordinates of the sun and the amount of clouds and it did all the work. After tweaking it a little, I got the orange sunset that I wanted.

The final challenge that I found was creating water. As my renderings show, I have found a good way to create standing water, but putting it into motion is a lot more difficult. I did not find any tutorials to guide me on making water in motion.