I’m going for realism on this one. I need some advice on where to focus my material and lighting fixes.
This looks to be an interesting project! I’m already intrigued on how you are doing the foam on the water, because it looks good. When I think about a whale though, I think HUGE, what type of whale are you referencing?
That’s a good point. I think I will increase the scale of the whale. It could make for more impact and currently it looks like a baby whale, which isn’t what I want. This is an old barnacle-covered long in the tooth humpback. The foam currently is done with a tileable black and white mask that I made. I plan on increasing the depth using more particle systems though.
It looks great! Maybe a bit more dense foam on the water around the tail though?
Thanks. I agree on the foam, and made the vertex map stronger in that area and also in a line behind it towards the buoy. I started painting the skin, as I need to remake it as the original was 90% image texture from a photo I found. Just saw a weird normal patch, hmmm need to clean that up.
I’m assuming you used the ocean modifier, but I was wondering how you got the water to form the hole or vortex that is around his tail… did you end up adding that after running the sim? Take a look at this image when you have time http://coastalcare.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/whale-stranded.jpg
Not sure how best to really capture the sense of scale of these beautiful creatures, It seems like it is a tough challenge at this camera angle.
I applied the ocean modifier and made a shape key using proportional edit. The alternative would be to use a lattice on the ocean modifier, but I need to get access to the vertex data for masking and to just have finer control. I’m getting a bit desperate in the realism department and have resorted to dof and composting filters. I may go for a totally different shot where there are more objects of known scale to compare it to.
