Templar Vaxus: nice work, I have no crits… keep it up 
Still need help with problem on bottom of first page (don’t understand). Here is an update on the start of the Taniwha
wow thats amazing, how long have you been modeling?
Do you mean this specific model or just modelling in general
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I started the Taniwha’s head about 4 hours ago. I am a little worried that it needs a bit more detail
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As for modelling in general I have had about two years of experience under my belt (although texturing and compositing are my weak sides to this project I am hoping to improve them)
I hope one of these is the right answer to your question Truth
P.S thanks for all the positive comments and constructive criticism, it really is bringing my idea to life
I am having a real hard time doing the body for the Taniwha. Anyone have any suggestions. It just doesn’t look right. I have tried about 6 different methods
Please Help. I am stuck
Nevermind it’s sorted now. Can someone explain what eppo was talking about in his last comments about fixing crashing when rendering?
for making the general shape of the body I would try using a curve. there are a couple ways to do this, but my brain is too tired to explain right now. it involves changing some settings and then alt-s ing the control points, then converting to mesh.
(edit) also you could save alot on polygons by doing a normals bake onto a lower poly model from the high poly head. are you using multires?
The idea is, you’re trying to render all picture consisting of a stellar amount of polys. Comp is too short on everything for that amount of work, crash imminent… Since you have rendered ship as one object and pc did not crash, or did it?, have you tried to render just ocean, just mountain?
Could be done like select mountain mesh, hit M 3, select ocean, hit M 2, select Taniwha, hit M 5. Now you have separate so called layers for them. Make one more with lights. Look bottom part of 3dwiev - small dots representing these layers - Shift select where lights and ship are, render and so on (orange being selected). Such renders could be combined in blender’s Compositor using Render layers on Render tab. Compositing does not need that amount of PC resources, takes a bit more effort and time maybe. PC doesn’t crash, crowds admire picture :). No harm to RAM or CPU anymore.
Yes I am using Multi-Res on the Taniwha. I was concerned about modelling the Taniwha’s body with Multi-Res as well but that normal bake sounds like a good idea.
I have done it with a curve. It fits well
I have put them into separate layers for rendering. I havn’t tried yet but is this how it should be set up with render scenes and nodes???
quick run down of the curve thing:
- add bezier curve
- in edit buttons for the curve, click on 3D, and click off ‘back’ and ‘front’
- increase bevel depth and bevel resolution values
- select individual control points and use alt-s to make them narrower or wider
a note: most people think you need to use ‘bev ob’ to do this, but it is not so.
I would have started compositing building it up from background (mountains?), then with z-combine added ocean layer with silhouette of ship to fake reflections, then aplpha over ship and lastly what’s most forward object.
Some quick experimenting with cube, suzanne and plane is handy to check ideas 
Okay I am finished the modelling now. Here is the scene as it is:
I used a curve for the body of the body of Taniwha. I will use a normal texture map to create the scales on the body.
Now eppo I have had maybe two weeks work with the compositor and have very limited knowledge on how it works. Is their an article or tutorial on this ability to split the scene and render it back together.
Also I am looking to have some clouds and cannons firing at the Taniwha. Doing some quick tests I noticed that the Cycles render does not render anything from the cloud generator. So how should I be doing this (e.g adding them in Photoshop afterwards or something). These are just thoughts I am having before I actually getting to it.
Thanks guys I’m really trying to persevere with this project, got a little bogged down with this compositing problem
Got some example thrown together. Take a look, hope you’ll find something useful.
Sculpted thing (out of single bezier, zero artistic value:)) with high poly is in another scene with it’s own sun, so when you look at what blender shows, its just first scenes verts numbers. Renders separately, so if you’re able to render yours, it’ll be there on final. Since all your objects are high poly, you might do separate scenes instead of layers for each of them, dunno, needs testing.
Also, for ocean i used a bit subdivided plane and procedural texture, not ocean sim. One more simple plane for horizon line likely would have helped, now it’s kinda not horizontal…Some colored planes beneath the surface make local difference in tonality.
Might consider use of some particles for water splashes or foam somewhere.
Since ship is further back, not quite visible in detail, rigging faked by wire render of shaped planes
DOF’s (by blurring a bit) and such - could be added in compositor.
This is no cycles version unfortunately, but compositing would be the same.
No idea about real clouds and smoke in cycles. Image texture for background, most likely. There is some volumetric patch for cycles somewhere out there, never used this, just red on Big Cycles Thread; that might do for smoke probably. But this is wip, experimental and all the such… Even generating something like several cannon shots in bi and combining it somehow into final looks terrifying a bit. Option B - Photoshop?
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/12494
Hope helps,
Happpy blending!
Figured out how to do it. You take a single layer and render it then save it as an open exr. You do that for all of the layers then open another blender using z combine you connect them together and render it all together. Perhaps I can do the same with Cycles. If that’s the case then I will be able to do the clouds in blender internal and then combine it with cycles render
Here is what it looks like rendered with my new method.
Update
Sorry for the wait
I have applied textures, lighting and compositing to most of the scene. I have some tweaking on the lights to show the Taniwha more and am hoping to fix the cannons shots.
It’s getting better. Any feedback and critique is useful
Attachments
it’s looking great, way to stick with it. one thing i notice though, is a compositional issue, where the sillouette of the monster is overlapping the similarly colored island in the background, and the angles line up somewhat. this is a compositional no no and causes a certain flatness, so I would consider tweaking his position a bit.
Oooh, pretty! Well, in a sense, if sea monsters can be pretty…I think the color modulation on the muzzle flash glare is set to be too high. Try something a bit lower. Also the sails aren’t billowing quite enough.
cool update, render is beautiful love the lighting… only spec on the ships hull to make it look wet?
