I created this after coming back from one of the best summer vacations at the beach that I have ever had and look forward to next year. But I’m wondering if there is any way to add anything to it to make it look even better. I’m really proud of this build and am very satisfied with the way it turned out, but I’m wondering what I can do to make it look even better.
Thanks;)
The water, in my opinion, looks very good. I would however try and find some higher quality wood textures for the pier. It looks a little fake. Also the bottle looks like it is completely straight up, but i guess thats on purpose. Also if you want to be really detailed, add some normal and specular maps to your textures and try and make the wood thats touching the water show some corrosion. Other than that, it looks like a pretty good scene 
Thanks, but do you possibly know where I could get a higher quality texture for it?
Well I always use cgtextures and download the highest quality version that’s free. Also I create all of my normal maps and specularity maps on Gimp.
Cool I got my textures from there too but it looks like ill have to do some more searching.
Yah, I mean the darker texture you have looks pretty good, but the lighter one looks unwrapped funny and like it doesn’t belong on a pier scene
Are you rendering with cycles?
yup
Its my first real scene that I came up with by myself using cycles. All my other builds have been in blender render, but i decided to mix it up.
and ya i did unwrap it weird and couldn’t find a good texture to go with it
Ok, cycles is superior, so good job with that. As for the textures, try and find a texture that looks like it has been soaking in water for a water. The one you have looks too fine and clean. But hey, great job with the ocean sim. I usually avoid doing scenes that need ocean simulations because I suck at them, but you nailed it
I would also suggest busting out some photo reference of a pier and looking at how the planks are joined to the ‘legs’ - right now yours look a bit stuck together, which is fine, but I don’t think it would hold up under a storm.
That was the only thing that really caught my eye - otherwise, great!
I actually did look at some photos and strangely enough that’s how some of them did it. But ya I’m going to be working more on those pillars.
Thanks for the help!!
you should also create some displace/normal maps for the water around the bottle and pier’s foundation poles to make it seem like the water’s reacting to it’s environment. Right now it seems as if the water goes straight through them.
Ok I wish I had seen that before I had created 2.0:
I put the bottle at more of an angle messed with the pillars textures a little and even their shapes, not to pleased with the tops but oh well. Ill look into what you said Nivos but for the time being i have no idea how to do that.:rolleyes:
I like the ocean, the wood needs some tweaking with the materials. For what Nivos said, I suggest these ways to do it:
- use dynamic paint, with the ocean as canvas with surfaces type of waves, and the pillars and bottle as brushes (look for tutorials for more details)
- go to texture painting, create a new texture for the ocean and paint some circles around the pillars and the bottle, then use that texture either with a displacement modifier or as a bump map.
I would suggest also to scale the bottle up a little bit, so that it pops out more.
-Jonathan
I got that set up but it doesn’t seem to be working at all. I don’t know what i did wrong.:no: (the dynamic paint and all that stuff) I even found a tutorial about how to add it to the ocean modifier and im getting nothing.
Did you use it as a bump map or a displacement modifier? What did you do in brief words?
And to clarify what I said, I suggested tthat you choose one of those ways, or you could combine them, but they are almost completely different.
-Jonathan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tojD1kzr3Ro he sets up the dp and then in node editor combines it with the foam and adds it into the displacement. I can get the paint to show up in the materials view but not in the render. I whent through the tutorial twice and still cant find what I did wrong.
I have a thread about a proceduraly textured ocean, I will make an update about custom waves tomorrow. But for now, what you can do is add wave modifiers to your ocean for each object that casts waves, and for the start position set your objects, then find a frame that suits you, like so:
Note: In case you have your pillars in the same object, in order to use this technique, you will have to separate them, and if you have an array modifier you have to apply it and then separate them).
-Jonathan
Attachments
OH well that is actually SOOOOOOOO much easier!!! Thank you so much Jonathan Cygan.
No problem, happy to help. I will anyway post tomorrow a way of doing something similar with textures only (no dynamic paint), but I believe that with the wave modifier it is the simplest way, maybe you should try tweaking the setting, mostly the fallof, the height, the width, and the narrowness.
I believe that your image looks awesome, with the wave modifier you will have some better detail and realism, I believe this will be amazing! Maybe you should try a little more the attention to the bottle, by scaling it up, adding some subtle depth of field, and lighting it.
Keep up the good work!!!
-Jonathan