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Geometry! By Tom Marlin
( Page 2 ) |
"SAILING, SAILING . . ."
The sailboat is around 800 polys, consisting of some
simple primitives. For the curve of the ship, I used an irregular polygon and swept it,
then repeated it several times and stacked the resulting planks to create the sides of the
ship.
The curve in the sails is achieved by creating a sphere, boolean subtracting another
sphere inside it, then chopping out a 3D arc. This particular model can stand up-close
scrutiny with the peeling paint and clapboard textures applied.
"DON'T BE
GULLIBLE . . ."
Here's where I really decided to scrimp and save on
geometry. In my original version of this scene, I used about a dozen seagull meshes
totaling about 8,000 polys. Since they're never seen up close in the scene, I created
transparency maps (clip maps) of the seagulls in various flight positions, and mapped them
onto single polys.
For the seagull in the foreground (see final render, above), more trickery -- it's also a
transparency map on a single poly.
"ON THE BEACH .
. ."
Scrimping even more, but adding much needed detail, you
can see what I did for the beach, waves, and beach greenery. Each is a single poly with
the appropriate texture mapped.
The waves are an irregular, single poly formed to look like waves, and colored white.
You'll see these waves lapping against the sailboat, the dock and other rocks in the
scene.
I used the very same poly for the greenery, resizing and reshaping it to look like bushes
with with the texture applied. The beach is just a small mesh mapped with a sand texture.
"LIGHT
IT UP! . . ."
The final key to making all this work is the lighting.
For outdoor lighting, I usually use one main spot light (or sometimes an array of 12 spots
for soft shadows) to simulate the sun. I turn the spot's intensity up high (1.83 here) and
add some yellow to the light to simulate the sun.
The other spot light in the scene is there to light up the foreground rock and the perched
seagull, so it has no shadows cast. The four infinite lights are turned down extremely
low, but they do play a part in determining the overall lighting of the scene and the
darkness of the shadows.
Finally, I've added a bit of fog in this scene to give it an early morning look.
