This is my first go at the vray sun/sky system, not too sure if I’ve ‘got it’ completely yet, so any comments/crits and pointers would be welcome.
The things I don’t like the most are -
1) the horizon line - maybe some fog will help
2) some of the white materials on the yachts need a little tweak
Let me know if you think anything else could do with a tweak.
I would like to see a bigger image so that we can see more detail to give comments on.
as far as i see it now it looks quite nice but wont say alot more until i see a bigger image.
greets,
Niels Sinke
lovely rob.
i don’t have any crits, apart from perhaps use the white balance on the vray camera if your not already doing so - set it to ‘daylight’ or use a custom blue, and it will warm the image a bit. The only thing i got from this compared to your usual shots is this is really BLUE! (but i actually quite like this in this instance.)
are you selling a yellow rubber dingy yet? 
Niels - ok, will do a bigger render next. This was a bit small.
SV - haven’t looked at the camera white balance yet - I too was feeling the whole blue-ness but couldn’t work out how to reduce it - will give it a bit of a tweak for the next render and see what happens.
Next job will be to model a nice rubber dinghy just for you!
Here’s a bigger render..
Tried adding a light blue fog to the scene but it came out black (!) does environment fog not work with the vray physical cam?
Also comp’ed in some much needed clouds in photoshop.
SV - white balance worked well, thanks!
Boat
Maybe the boats are to clean… can you dirty them up? What I do is override all my materials with a vrayltml using a dirtmap. I overlay that occlusion map pass in PS and play with the opacity. It might to the trick for you shiny new boats.
i love the wet maps on the concrete just above the water line.
really nice touch.
as vlado wrote here:
glorybound - thanks, will give that a try.
sv - ah,thanks -will give up on the fog then! The pontoon float textures I got from www.cgtextures.com - a fantastic resource.
don’t you DARE give up mcvltd…! what kind of attitude is that?
just throw the vray sky into the environment fog colour (sorry Mike, couldn’t let this go on).
Computers can never be allowed to beat humans…hello???
oh, and just for kicks…when you have time of course…
why don’t you try more refraction in the water?
change the fog colour to more of a teal and if you don’t want to see all the way to the floor, slap a fresnel falloff into the refraction glossy channel…Instead of black and white, change the black to more of a grey. You may have to play with the curves to get the water to look clear near the top, then blurry the deeper it gets. like a fake dispersion…
just a thought.
Yikes! Look smart lads, olitech’s back in the office!! <furiously twiddles with mouse and looks busy..>
mmm.. will give that fog thing another go then 
Not too sure this will work for my current setup - the water is just a dreamscape surface without any volume so I think any fog values wont have any affect - and I can’t add a shell modifier on it because I’m maxed out on my ram (32bit here… yeah, I know, promise I’ll upgrade soon!). Will give this a try on a smaller scene though, maybe with the camera looking down from a higher position.
dreamscape geometry is perfect for it…dont’ shell it…don’t add volume. we use vray infinite planes to do it and works like a charm. your dreamscape surface should look waaaay better than the planes we use…
you will need a plane for the ocean floor, that’s all.
twiddling the mouse! LOL! don’t forget to Alt-tab when someone walks by..
oooh, that’s the setup I’ve got at the moment! I can see some serious playing has to be done, will post some results soon.
mmmm…will try alt+tab when this hires render is finished…
Hehehe… you the man! Looks really good!!
Funnily enough, that’s the exact sinking feeling I’m getting at the moment…
<presses alt+tab> oh,so that’s what that does!
Well, had a quick play with the refraction falloff and it seemed to work well - used as a world zdepth falloff, but, ran into problems when trying to get shadows from the objects floating on the water to cast onto the vray plane below (acting as the sea bed). As soon as I turn on ‘receive shadows’ for the vray plane, the water looses it’s refraction! The only objects that are casting shadows are the boats and pontoons. Anyone know whats going on here? Olitech - I notice you have shadows in your scene - did you do anything special to get these?
btw - vray sky in the environment fog map works a treat, thanks!
Your camera is just too low and your water too reflective, there is refraction its just harder to see. And do you have ‘affect shadows’ turned on for your water?
hmmm..nothing special in my water…
like cubiclegangster said, just make sure you have ‘affect shadows’ ticked on your water material.
‘receive shadows’ def needs to be on in your floor material.
i’m getting shadows on the water surface -and- in the ocean floor. my camera is also at a higher angle…
only other thing is making sure the shadow bias of your sun is at .01 if you’re using meters/meters…?
I’m pretty sure affect shadows is turned on, not too sure about the bias - will take look, and the reflection definately does take away some of the visability of the refraction. I was just stunned by the difference between turning the receive shadows on/off. Will have a crawl through the scene in more detail tonight.
Thanks guys!
