Seafloor MKI

Sorry Tina, I missed your question. If you ever return to this then here is your answer. I start a lot of different experiments, many of them lead nowhere but they remain scattered around my desktop and in folders and generally, I'm not very organised. Then one day, I see something I like the look of and work on that, progress it a bit. Then maybe get stuck and leave it alone for a few months. Then I'll pick it up, take one idea from it, delete the bit I was stuck on, replace it with something I can do and finish it all in a flourish. Genearlly, I probably have three or four projects I'm seriously thinking about and about a dozen I keep scanning over, scratching my head and picking at.

* How many projects do you work on at a time? This is very lovely. I felt the same as spektyr did. But if you look at it long enough and seeing it is in some type of cave the lighting makes sence. You have it right on.

Underwater scenes are never easy. Apart from the beautiful setup of the seascape and the octopus, I like the absence of the light rays which usually are there to give a better underwater feel. The empty space at left is a very courageous decision, the deep blue light in the cave at right is awsome to compensate for it. I thought perhaps some causic on the ground from the waves above but there is too much rocks overhead to make it real. Light and shadow suggest a bright light source at front left. This could be artificial to light the cave for the photographer who choose to use a fast film, 800 or 1600 ASA perhaps. There was a small f-stop number set, 4 perhaps, which is evident from the DOF. No, the scene is not too bright, even if it may be 100 ft below the surface. And this also accounts for the "missing" light rays. Definitely a 5/5.

I realy love this picture. Becouse of the water is crystal clear, you can see every detail in this scene. It must be very close to the surface, becouse you can eve see all the shadow-parts. Maybe its even a scene from a big Sea Aquarium. Beautiful.

Regarding render performance, I'm using an old 1.8 P4 with 786 meg of PC800 Rambus, essentially a jelopy compaired to what's available now. I'm about to describe what is probably every Brycer's, and any other 3D application user's for that matter, wet dream. An IBM Blade Center with 16 of the fastest quad ZEON Server boards available that are fully loaded with the fastest memory they can handle and set up as a dedicated render farm. Imagine the complexity of the images you could render in under 10 minutes with that! Not to mention animations. One day it will be mine. Oh Yes. It [I]will[/I] be mine! ;-)

My own thoughts on light rays followed very closely your debate. Adding the rays is dangerously akin to throwing in lens flair... but at the same time - it works - even if it is a bit predicable. Alternatively, I considered maybe yet another light source to shine on the ground and make wave patterns... but not where the rock is overhanging. The pose of the octopus was provided with the model so I can't take credit for that. I would mention that since DAZ studio has been updated, the tenticle articulation is much less angular than it was before. The sand is a free resource on my website and the other rock material is just a hodge podge of rugged textures, the real trick I found is making the materials darker than usual and tweaking up the hdr settings so I know I've always got plenty of light to play with. As for rendering, I'm using second hand single core 3.4ghz P4 processor I bidded off of ebay. It is easy to set up and IBL scene that takes a long time to render, the challenge is to pear things down and still get the effect I wanted in the first place. Avoiding transparent materials. Use low IBL quality settings. Hide shadow edges with bumpy materials... You know. Fudge things. In this case, I used the softshadow option in premium effects - since I wanted to try DOF anyway... and 36rpp is about the lowest resolution that it tollerable to me - I'd prefer 64, but then it would have probably taken ten hours to render instead, which is a bit much for a wip.

. I figured the extra light could have been from the flash of the camera, thats why its all up in the front, but now I am just bending things to go my way, lol. I guess some light rays would help this give a more underwater look

forgot to say But aside from those issues i mentioned, there are some definet strengths that need mentioning, like the terrains! Very Very good materials. Natural movement in the arms oc the octopus. I must get a dual processor or dual core machine soon as I would hardly attempt hdr and depyth of field in an underwater scene on myt single 3ghz processor. Nice work once again David.

I tend to agree that there's something missing from the underwater feel, but I don't know what. Perhaps the lighting is too bright. I also feel something unusual with the water refraction.

Too much light. It doesn't 'look' so deep. If it were so deep as to eliminate sun rays it would be very dark. Just my intuition talking. ;-)

. At first I was going to say the same thing as spektyr did, but then this scene could be too deep for sunlight to travel that far. For me this scene is a 5/5, adding the light rays is just doing the same old thing, but the same old thing can look good, even if wrong.

This is a beautiful image. I have just one problem with it. I can't really tell that it's an underwater scene. The addition of light beams angling in from the outside of the cave would create a more convincing underwater feel. Otherwise it's all very realistic especially with the DOF.