[Tiago2]

I like swankymonkey idea. It would give it a bit of 'drama' to it and make it more interesting.

U should add a lil fog to your scene, like in real life underwater. Maybe u're not thinking about that yet...

Your scene is coming along very nicely! Like it alot.

[priimate]

Hi Guys! Yep! You're definatley right! That last render only has the crab can in it, 'cos I didn't have time to render more when I posted last! Never fear! There's a lot more in the scene than just this stuff ( including fog that's more prominent with all the background set turned on!) I had a jellyfish that was cluttering the scene, so I removed it, and some little shrimp (with the glowing texture that I tried on the crab)! More wips when time permits!

Cheers! priimate.

[Tiago2]

Sounds good

[priimate]

Hi All!
Finally back workin' on this (been a bit busy at work!). So i'm still adding bits and pieces to my scene and tinkering with various settings. I pushed the fog back a little cos it was killing the rocks and weeds in the background. That deadline's starting to loom in the distance!.....

Cheers! priimate.

[Tiago2]

nicely done

[priimate]

Hi All! Nearly finished..... WOO HOOOO!!! Just a few more little bits and pieces perhaps!

Here's where i'm at so far...

Cheers! priimate.

[Tiago2]

Great ideas for the envirnment. Dim the glow on the shrimp in the middle, next to yours fishes light.

[priimate]

Hi Tiago2! As soon as the last pic finished rendering, I thought " I should really turn down the glow on that shrimp....!"

Great minds think alike huh?!? LOL

Cheers! priimate.

[swankymonkey]

The background "sky" turned out very cool. I love the sense of depth this piece conveys.

[priimate]

Cheers for the feedback swankymonkey! Here's an update with some small alterations. Depending on how your monitor's set, it's hard to see some of the background, so I moved some of it into the light a bit. I have fall offs set on all the lights and fog set just outside the lights influence, so things disappear quickly if they get too far away!

Cheers! priimate.

[priimate]

Hi All! Now that everythings pretty much done I thought I should put up a couple of wips of my scene composition.

This one's a wireframe top view showing object and light positions. Due to the zoom and FOV settings on the camera, it appears that the objects are further away than they really are (for example, the tin can appears closer to the camera than the angler fish in the final render, but the distance to the closest edges of both models are basically the same).

I also have lots of cameras everywhere, which I use to try out different angles, zoom settings and resolutions before deciding on which to use.

[priimate]

Here's a flat shade perspective view showing, in a very basic way, how the lights are effecting various areas. The light at the top right is a volumetric to silhouette the rock formations in the background. This light doesn't illuminate the scene itself, I cloned it and slightly adjusted the settings, as well as switching off the clone's volumetrics, to provide a backlight to the scene. It is this light that provides almost all the light to the angler fish's body.

The angler fish is almost black, with a couple of specularity gradients (among other things!) that pick up the backlight to give it that gunmetal colour.

[priimate]

Finally (for those who take interest in such things!) here are the scene statistics, The images I used in the scene are for the angler's spots, pupils and my signature on the rock in the bottom corner. Everything else is procedural/shaders. (Also, I forgot to mention that in the previous images, I disabled the sea floor object so the other objects are more visible!)

Thanks to everyone who has stopped by to comment on my work or just take a quick peek at this thread! Goodluck to Everyone who entered!!!

Cheers! priimate.:attn:

[KrisYoung1980]

Hey mate,

Thanks for posting the stats, i'm a bit of a geek when it comes to these things. Your scene looks fantastic, hope you are remembering that you need to post your final image in the finals thread (norm or noob) before the end of the month, i'd hate to think you missed out on winning coz of a wee thing like that.
Cheers,

Kris

[priimate]

Cheers Kris! Rendered off my final while I was at work (takes about 1hr 43mins.) and got home to find that i'd left a couple of shaders active that I was playing around with a couple of nights ago (the angler fish looked like it had a huge, white infection on its lip that was slowly devouring it's whole head!).... D'OH!

Fortunately, "The Wedding Singer" was on telly, so I re-rendered while I was watching that! So here's my final render (which I will now post in the finals thread too - before anything else goes wrong!)

Cheers! priimate.

I'm calling this one...

"Midnight Snack"