Vlynndar said:
Haha, oh nice.
It looks very man-made. A hint by an ancient civilization?
Or, if it's messier, nature itself anticipates it.
Ever watched the TV show "Lost", and wondered about their island? Well, I think Pandora Island is a bit mystical, a bit mysterious, and I wouldn't like to say if it's man-made, natural or... otherworldly!
dflemstr said:
Damn, the complexity :blink: very well done.
This is where I tend to shoot myself in the foot with "standing on the shoulders of giants" type comments, so let's see if I can rephrase it to have a little more obvious ego.
I remember well the early days of POV-Ray 3, when everything I produced on screen, every triangle, every vertex, has been defined by me specifically, by something I had typed in (no GUI back then at all, you see). That was hard work, and using that level of software I did some things that made me very pleased, but I could never have hoped to achieve the complexity of what one can accomplish with modern software.
Nor do I consider modern software (or models) to be "cheating" - they are all just the tools one puts in to make the artwork. I've never seen Terry Pratchett criticised for using a Word Processor instead of writing everything out in pencil, nor any other author for that matter. Tools are just tools - and they help you to create the image, or story, or message of whatever sort. It's really great. this image is created in Vue 6 Infinite - like much of my software it's a couple of years out of date (but then, with my hardware having been playing up I'm hardly going to keep shelling out for expensive software to fail to run reliably, am I?). It's probably not that difficlt to do as well if not better with the current free version at:
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_8_pioneer/
but I haven't tried anything more recent than my version 6, so I can't say for sure what these "Pioneer" versions are like.
dflemstr said:
But what about the water? Looks kinda... non-transparent?
It bothered me too, which is why this is officially a "WIP" and not a "Done", but the water is actually quite transparent, as I hope this animation shows (the frames are generated by mixing a render + water, as before, with a new render without water. The water layer is at 100% opacity, then 75%, 50%, 255 then not visible at all).
The problems seem to really be:
1. Not enough under-water detail (e.g. fish, people, monsters) to illustrate that it's water.
2. Not enough depth to the water, to put such details in.
The island is quite deliberately the focus of the scene, and it may be that I've made a mistake in focussing on the island too closely and not building enough around it - if it were a smaller part of the scene itself then there might be more surrounding to give the island greater credibility. Then again, it was actually modelled in part after a wonderful beach in Southern Spain that I literally loved as a child, and is purposefully shallow well beyond camera range - there is no "depth" to put anything significant into. Maybe I could produce a small school of fish, I'll have to think about it, but it's really shallow - ought to be GORGEOUS to play in
I've still got some thinking to do and more experimenting with the lighting at least, I suspect, before I'm certain I'll call it done - and maybe (MAYBE) I'll try redoing it with less foxus on the logo in order to try and get greater depth to the water (which would let me put more detail offshore) but, well, it's a trade off between my time and effort and the time before ED calls "halt" on Wallpaper submissions, as they'll have to decide at some stage or other I'd have thought, before the beastie starts shipping.
DuckMan said:
haha! love the Island! I have always found gargling a nice single malt scotch to do the trick. really clears the head... plus it's delicious and after a couple glasses you don't care that you are sick anymore. I too have been away a lot lately building a custom rom for the moto droid.
It has turned out to be more of a pain in the butt than I anticipated. but I have android running great on my beagleboard so I can't wait to port it over to the pandora!
Feel better monk!
My preferences is for a "Souther Comfort" variation on the 2Hot Toddy" theme, but alas with the insides of my nose having been cut and burnt out, and other ailments thrown in, my body is doing enough battling without adding alcohol to the mix. Not that I don't know people who are doing worse, but as I've been forbidden from exercising by the quacks (so my body can concentrate on recovery) I'm holding back on the drinkies
Not that I drink much anyway, but a SC Hot toddy always went down well and, as you say, if one doesn't FEEL bad who really cares, usually? LOL.
Ta
