SKY WATER SCENES
By Marco Buccci
In my opinion, images of sky water are the best, and most
pleasing renderings you'll ever see. This tutorial will show you just how easy it is to
make a realistic image of a horizon.
First, make a plane using the 
button. Next thing you'll want to do is make that plane very large so it looks like a vast
sea. To acheive this affect, you right click the OBJECT TOOL button and scale it larger. I
used 
Now that that's done, you'll want to map it with a nice rippled water texture map. The
best way to do this is just to select a nice water colour from the "material
color" box. Here's what I like to use...
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BE SURE YOUR AMBIENT SETTING IS SET TO ZERO!
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To get the "bump map" settings
box, you have to right click on the bump icon in the "shader/maps" box. |
Once the water is all said and done, you need a good looking sky (which is the more tricky
part of creating a horizon scene).
If you have Adobe Photoshop, you can create a good sky texture, just go into the program,
select your two colours. Top one for cloud colour and bottom for the sky colour, then go
up to filter/render/clouds. I made this one...
click on the Image to see a larger version
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Now make a sphere. But insead of just the default sphere, make sure you right click on the
sphere icon and use these settings.... That will make the sphere very rounded so when
it's stretched out, it will remain round as opposed to having "sharp" edges. Now
just hollow out the sphere you just created by copying it (CTRL+C) and make your copy a
little bit smaller than your original so when you difference them, your result will be a
hollow
sphere. Now stretch that sphere so it "covers" the entire plane you created
earlier. Make sure you scale it using all the axis though (a common mistake). Now map your
sphere with the cloud texture map, and rotate the camera view so that you are
"inside" the giant sphere but on top of your water plane. Yes, the wireframe
does look very weird but you'll see major results in the end! Now, for your final step,
make an infinite shadowless light and use an intensity of
1.25. Make sure your shadowless light source is inside your large sphere, and have it
point at the point where your water plane intersects with the sky. Set the renderer to
raytrace and if you want to, add a little fog. Push the render button and sit back.
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