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St. Elmo's Fire
Rendered with Regular AA. It doesn't really look like it, but I increased the transparency of the sails from "0" to 10%. Most of the metal, I used an "Oxidized Steel" mat. I would like to thank JedSwindell of England for creating the "Black Pearl". I have been wanting to render a ship scene with St. Elmo's Fire for awhile and finally attempted it with the Black Pearl. Like I said, I "attempted" to make it. For some reason, the scene just doesn't look right to me, something seems off but I can't quite grasp it, so all comments are greatly appreciated.
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Ya got it, Bizarre indeed.
Very bizarre scene here. Spookly overcast sky, with some sort of magical glow coming up from beneath. Such ideas are psychologiclaly unsettly, th eidea of things rising up from below to overtake those above. The slpash looke very good if i am looking at metal filaments from a drill of saw or something. it does somehow work for me though, the story makes sense. Good job!
I've never seen that St. Elmo's fire but I'm sure read about it in many adventure novels. So it's the blue light on the masts then, not the starnge - but charming - green light on the water aft of the boat. If you have fine lines, you do need Fine art AA. Use the plop render option and render a small part of the strings. This will help you determine whether 16 rpp are sufficient or wehether you need more.
Well, the background is a sky .mat I used. The green light surprised me. I put lights in the ship (not green) and ended up with the green light on the sea. I was going to take the lights out, but as I was working on this, I kinda grew to like the green lights on the sea.
Looking at how the background turned out, I'd say you used depth of field. But having the ropes of the ship almost like dotted lines speak of low AA this time. When you have such a small thin detail you want to be seen, you'll need at least 16rpp Fine Art AA. And there's no way around that. Rendertime sacrifice is the price. Why the background appears like this I really have to guess. As if smudge/blur postwork on chosen areas has been applied. If it's not that, then maybe you export the image out of Bryce as a (low quality) *.jpg and then re-save it one more time with other 2d editing app. As final words I'd say that I'm impressed with the waves and how the ship appears to be "fighting" them. I just don't see where the green light is coming from. The "sparks" are also nice ;)