| | | Chris Distefano | | Final Scene | | | Eternal Horizon | |
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| | Inspiration
When trying to find inspiration for this final piece, I tried to look within myself, tried to find something that I really enjoy and that means a lot to me. I didn’t want to do a piece that had no deeper meaning. I chose to copy a painting that I have hanging over the living room T.V. in my house. It is a Thomas Kinkaid painting that shows a cross up on a mountain, with the sun shining through the clouds overlooking other mountain tops coming through the fog. I sketched this painting free-hand and than started to think of whether to do this scene overlooking the ocean or other mountain tops. I really liked the idea of a sunset over the ocean, and when I found a very helpful tutorial online, I decided this is what I was going to do. I decided, late in the project to put the hands into the piece. I wanted to be quite symbolic, and to show my faith. I think the hands, with the piercing adds a lot to the overall look and mood of the piece. I tried to achieve realism as much as possible to not take away from the feeling.
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| | | Objects | Cross | Chris Distefano | | | Landscape | Chris Distefano | | | Rocks | Chris Distefano | | | Grass | SasLite tweaked by Chris Distefano | | | Sky | Skytracer 2 (clouds greatly tweaked by Chris Distefano) | | | Ocean | Chris Distefano (see references) | | | Hand | Loaded by lightwave (extremely tweaked by Chris Distefano-to fit my purposes) | | | | | | Textures | Soil Image | epod.usra.edu/archive/images/soilprofile22.jpg | | | Image for Rocks | www.fotosearch.com |
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| | Problems and Solutions
SkyTracer 2. Plain and simple. I followed this great tutorial online that gave me to ocean that I was looking for. I gave me the feeling I wanted and everything. I tweaked some of the values to serve my sunset purpose a little, but overall it worked great. When dealing with the sky, and trying to place the sun inside my scene, it took an arm and a leg. I wanted to first use SkyTracer 1, but the way the sky looked inside the scene didn’t fit. Than I tried to use a sky dome with an image pasted onto it, but it didn’t give the realistic look I was going for. I played over and over and over with the sun trying to find its position and to place it in my scene. Eventually, I just had to get it at the location on the horizon I wanted, and move everything else in my scene to match it. Also, something was happening every time I loaded my scene. Everything was green. The land, the objects, the ocean was green in layout. It rendered fine, but it was hard to figure out where to put everything when it was all one color. I still never figured out the problem. Suggestion—save a whole lot of times. Clouds were also interesting to play with. The settings did not make sense to me. I placed coverage at 50% and the whole sky was covered, yet if I placed it up towards 100%, no clouds showed up. Basically, I started running out of time, after spending multiple class periods trying to fix the green issue, and more periods trying to figure out SkyTracer2.
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| | Time Frame
Modeling: Three-Five hours
Layout—Placement, lighting, and cameras: Five-Seven hours
Layout—Textures: Three-Five hours
Layout—SkyTracer2: Five-Seven hours (still not where I would like it, but deliverables!)
Rendering process: Two hours
Overall time spent with headache: Six Weeks
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