CSCI 140 Final Gallery

3-D Computer Modeling 
CSCI 140 Spring 2003

Zankich, Marty

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Marty ZankichFinal Scene
A Long Journey to Paradise
 
Inspiration/Story

Every project that I have done in Lightwave has been inside. My desk was inside and my group project was a jail scene, also inside. I wanted my project to be outside and I also wanted to challenge myself into learning something new and challenging. I first was going to make a castle on top of a mountain, but wasn't having too much fun. I then found a great tutorial on water and decided I was going to do a water scene with a canoe and maybe a bungalow. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.
 
  
 
Objects:WaterMarty Zankich
 IslandMarty Zankich
 Palm TreesLightwave
 SkyLightwave
 
Problems and Solutions:

Where should I begin. On the second day of working I found a tutorial on water and made something after awhile. It did not look like water so I kept playing around with the settings and looking back at the tutorial to see if I did something wrong. The next class period went pretty much the same way and I started to get frustrated. The third day I got smart and looked at other water tutorials. Some had real looking water while others did not. I used some things from the other tutorials such as SubPatching my water surface and adding a displacement map to the surface under item properties. At this point there was no looking back. I was making an ocean scene no mater how long it took. I did not have time to start something else so I would either live by the water or die by the water. Each time I would make a change in the specularity or bump map settings, the whole thing would change. Then I would have to render it to see what it looked like. This would take two to three minutes each time. I added a fast frensel shader, which helped. I tried the real frensel and thin film shaders, but they made the water look to light and unrealistic. I would be able to render my project three times and then on the fourth everything would freeze. It was guaranteed to happen on the third or fourth one. I made sure I saved everything each time I rendered. My camera was also zoomed in to make the water fill the screen. I didn't think it was a problem until I added the island to the picture. It would be close to the camera, but look so far away when I rendered it. When I finally thought I was done, I rendered on high anti-aliasing, and my water still had polygons showing in it. I forgot to put smoothing on in the surface editor. Once I did that everything worked out fine.

Tutorials:
www.naaslund.net/gfx/ocean_tut/ocean_tutorial.htm
www.3dluvr.com/content/article/107