Need tips/advice on a lighthouse scene

Artwork Works in Progress
#1

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y58/round3/My%203d%20stuff/render1-1.png
render1-1.jpg1280×1024 166 KB

Okay so I’ve just finished some quick texturing on the lighthouse and now I wanna move onto the lighting aspects and fluid physics. I only have until friday to finish this (it’s for a small competition me and some other 3D guys have going on).

I was wondering if anyone could help me out on how I can make that halo light look less monotonous (and have more width at the starting end)? And what settings I might use to get some realistic water particles to crash over the island? I was also just gonna use particles to create all of the water in the scene and I was wondering if I could just render the scene once for the animation and composite it with the waves and the light?

Sorry for all the questions :stuck_out_tongue: Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

#2

looks good. I suggest feather the edges of the light beam more, and add some dark rocks at the bottom.

#3

This could be a great scene. Love the angle and love the scene.

(I’m not good with particles, but I’ll give you some other advice)

You need to change the composition a bit. Smacking the lighthouse right in the middle is not going to work for a landscape shot (It could but depending what you do with the scene, it could look boring composition wise). Well, yours is not really totally in the middle :wink: Move it to the right or left - usually the rule is 1/3. Let the beam shoot over a landscape. It will help the eye drift off into the seascape/landscape.This scene really wants some drama!

Also make sure you place some very dark brooding clouds or fantastic HDR type light streaming clouds (Google for HDR clouds, landscapes).

You can even go for a morning or late afternoon yellow/reddish look. Make sure the sun is not on the scene but outside and you only see the glow. The light should strike the lighthouse from a angle and really light it up, instead of a silhouette when you place the sun behind it. Just a suggestion, I’m getting too carried away now… I think I’m a bit inspired by the scene :slight_smile:

Also, texturise the lighthouse bottom that it looks really worn and weathered from the beating waves. In fact the whole lighthouse should feel used and batterred (not cracked and broken!)

It all depends on your timeframe of course… but with good particle effects I think this scene will really shine - hope someone else could help you there.

Best of luck!

#4

Why do you want to use particles for the water? It’s Easier to have some fluid simulation. Nice scene anyway! and I m all in with Gustav^^

#5

Cheers :smiley: I was thinking the angle looked a bit off, and as for the sky I’ll check out some HDR maps then.

That’s what I meant, my bad :stuck_out_tongue:

Also I can’t say I know how to feather the light edges

#6

You don’t need to use fluids for the water, simulating such a large body of fluid would take a verry long time and require a tun of RAM. You can make decent looking water without fluids using procedural textures and displacement.

#7

Oh this is for a 7 second animation. Although I can’t get the simulations right anyways, they always mess up for some reason and it crashes (C++ runtime error) when I have the resolution too high (like 100) even though I have 4gb of ram and a core 2 duo e8400 :frowning:

I guess I’ll settle for calm waves using something I found yesterday; clicky. Unless anyone has any suggestions?