Sunshine August

The purpose of creating this image is improving my skill using the lighting, and the goal I would to see is the sunshine on the sea, because August is a very hot season, the sun is very strong and harsh to the eye, and maybe there is some steam arising on the sea level.

The lighting
I use two omni lights in this image, and I plan to use one of them as the big strong sun, other one as the normal light, to shine the whole scene.

1. Sun
Go to lights, and drag a omni to the top view and adjust its position, to make it just show on the top of scene,

Set the Attenuation value for this light: this value will be set depend on how high the sun is in this image. The value for my image is Near Attenuation 0,180, Far Attenuation is 180,880.

Add a lens effect to create the sun effect, setup the lens effect, and add Glow, Ray, Auto secondary, Star and Steak in the lens effect parameters, and then setup the value for them by clicking them on the right panel.
Lens effects globals
Ray
Star
Steak

2. Now drag other omni light on the top view as normal light, but it should be high enough to shine the entire scene,
Set the Attenuation value for this light,

Fog
Choose the Helpers button on the right panel, and Atmospheric Apparatus, and choose the SphereGizmo, and drag it to the front view to create a fog area
I just need the top area of SphereGizmo, so click hemisphere to cut the bottom part.

Click the button setup to set the values for the fog, and modify all the value in the new panel.






Rendering

I use a sky picture as the background, and a camera to pick the good angle picture.

Objects-August

After practicing on those two images, I have got a lot of skills to create different objects, and a lot of them I can create with the same method.

Dolphin
The way how to create a dolphin is almost same like creating the wild goose in October image in last blog.
Firstly, drag a box and covert it to Editable Poly, and go to polygon level to choose a polygon on the left view bevel it about 5 times, it depend on the shape, more times you bevel it, more easier to modify it, and the tail part I use Extrude to pull it, because I will build a tail on it. Choose other polygon on the right view, with the same method to create the head part, but it is shorter than the tail, so I just bevel twice, extrude it twice to create the mouth part.

Secondly, build the fins, go to choose the last part can be changed to the tail, and choose the one polygon on the front view and bevel it small and same to the other side.

Choose the right and left edges on the first box on front view, and connect them with 2 segments, and extrude the new polygon in the middle, and repeat the same thing on the other side.

Repeat the way also on the top view to create the top fin.

Last step, go to vertex level and adjust the shape,

Go to MeshSmooth path to make a smooth shape.

Copy other same 3 dolphins and create different swimming jumping shapes with Bend tool.

Sailboat
This sailboat is sailing in the farther scene, so it is bot necessary to create every detail on this boat, and the body of the boat is created by the method how to create the roof of that pavilion in the first image.

Firstly, drag a star in splines path, and scale it like a boat on the top view.
Covert it to Editable Poly, select the border and choose the boarder on the top view, and copy 4 boarders by push the shift key, each time scale it smaller than last one, so I have built the basic boat body right now.
Go to vertex level and adjust the point to create the head of the boat and the tail of the boat.

Secondly, create the sail parts, drag 3 cones and give different height as three masts, the tallest in the middle, and drag a box (200mm*500mm*2mm)as a piece of sail on the left view.
Go to Bend path and bend it about angle: 128 and move it onto one of the mast, and copy rest of them, and select all the sail and masts and right click the Rotate type a value 30 on y-axle.

I then create three sails on the boat head: drag a box, covert it to Editable Poly and cut it half by quickslice, go to polygon delete one half box, and go to noise path and give it a noise value, seed 100, scale 150,and strong 50 on z axle. Copy 2 of it and scale them smaller. Adjust their positions.

I also copy three of it as the flags on the top of masts.

At last, render the boat, and I used 5 Blinn slots for different parts of the boat.

The island
Drag a plane and set the length value 88, and width value 88.
Go to displace path, and set a Bitmap for this island and the shape can create from the bitmap, I create my bitmap by Photoshop, click the Bitmap and upload the image, and then set a noise map. Set the strength value, and modify a convent value, I got value about 54.

Rendering it with a grass land image.

Second final image-October

There is a big problem when I merge all the objests together, because the wheat file is too big to create a tract of wheat farmland, I just create the first line of it,and Iwill render other wheat by photoshop.

lighting

I use two target spot lights one right and one left and two omni lights,

one colour of the omni light is yellow as the moonlight.

The final pictures

This one is took by camera.