July/Aug - Noob - pianoman
 

I decided to start a new thread because I forgot to put July in the subject of the last one. So I'll state my idea again, and post that one image I had.

Here is what I originally posted:
The guidelines made it sound like it should be kind of a scary scene. My worst fear is deep, dark water. I hate looking down on dark water and seeing those dark shapes, not knowing what is down there. It freaks me out. So I decided to attempt to make a scene sort of like that. Maybe have a glassy lake in the moonlight, with an old dock in there. I also would like to have a thin layer of fog over the lake, but not too much, because I want to be able to see the water. I haven't started on this at all, so I don't have any pictures or anything. Feel free to give suggestions, thoughts, ideas, anything.

The second idea I had was this:
I would have a close up of a leaf sitting on water, a ripple coming out around it, and the leaf is on fire. I don't know how I came up with it, just thought it might look cool. The only thing is, I don't know if that would get me good lighting points.
Here is an image of the ripple for that one, although I'm leaning towards doing the first idea.

I've decided to do my first idea for this challenge, so I made a rough model - very rough - of the dock. I know texture doesn't matter for this challenge, but I'd like to texture it anyway. Please give me ideas for the shape of the dock and such, I'm not sure what it should look like yet. The dock is not going to be front and center in the scene, maybe just a silhouette off to the left side. Here is a picture of the rough model.

if you go with the first idea, I wouldn't make the dock look so solid. I'd use thinner poles. Maybe a very unstable construction in wood, with a few broken planks, and the water underneath...that would look scary. If it's just a silhouette though, it may not be that important.

Thanks, I'll work on that. What would be the best way of making broken planks? Just making the end jagged by moving points? Also, what would I do about texture?

Broken planks? Maybe u could knife it up a bit and simply just move the points around... You could also entirely break off some pieces and just re-insert them away from where they were before at an angle where it might look more "jaggedy". :alien:

But then again, depending on how far its gonna be, and since you also said only a silhouette, I don't think either that too much detail or even much texturing is required on this part...:rolleyes:

I really like the ripple idea, the render is very nice I have been working with ripples in some of my work as well, their could be alot of very interesting light situation with that idea.

Ryan

Yea, I like the ripple. But do you think I could do a lot of good lighting with a scene like that?

Defiantly, just think about how light reflects off of the surface and refracts thought the surface. Move your camera below the surface will make so very interesting distortion.

I worked on the dock a bit, made it a little broken up. Let me know what you think.

DUDE!!!!:attn: hey! It looks a lot better, I still think that you could break it up a little bit more, especially the planks themselves, but I really like the end of the dock. GREAT JOB!:headbang: :alien:

Here we go, I broke up a bunch of the planks. Should I cause more damage? Less damage? Let me know

The next thing I'm going to tackle is making trees to go around the lake. I have a tree generator, but it doesn't generate the leaves. Anyone know how to make some good leaves? They'll probably be silhouettes also, so texture doesn't really matter.

good progress.

I'd recomend varying the ends of the planks some. Right now, they're perfectly in row.

lookin' good !
Now that's a scary dock....:p

thanks, I tried to make the ends of the planks more varied so they're not in a row.

now that's what i'm talkin' about!!! ;) Those planks look a bjillion times better! Love the dock man! :)