UnderWater Holiday Project

[soulfeltart]

Whats up guy's-
I just joined DT forums and thought I'd give this comp. a shot- I feel its a great way to excercise creativity and continue to build skill through practice.
It gives me great satisfaction to create a piece of work, and even more when I am pleased with the final outcome!

I am teaching myself the montrous Maya, one day I hope to be comfortably proficient in the app- and maybe land a job that's related to the Beast!

Anyways- Here is an early model of my underwater Santa for a start:

My idea will revolve around a still that i hope conveys the discovery of santa down below!!

Comments, feedback totally welcome!

Thanks

[brandeil]

Looking good :)

[soulfeltart]

haha!-
Thanks, Brandeil its coming along pretty quickly- I have been working on modeling some other sealife for about 5 hours straight- It(time) goes by so fast when you get into ideas!

I'll post progress a little later

[DjVoyager]

Welcome to DT, soulfeltart :)

Your octo-santa looks great! Is he getting ready to dish out presents? With all those tentacles it would be a cinch for him to hang holiday decorations ;)

Looking forward to seeing your progress.

P.S: I've moved your thread in the December forum since it is for the contest.

[deathwish]

welcome matey and good luck

[soulfeltart]

Progress...

tried working a little bit with caustics to add to the feeling of the scene being underwater

I also am messing around with glow intensities and continuing to tweak attributes to get the result looking proper for the environment- Any tips or comments would be greatly appreciated!

I threw in a little lens flare for fun, and may or may Not keep it in the final render

More on the way soon fellas! :dance

P.s.- Thanks for the comments so far- and thanks for welcoming into such an awesome community

[soulfeltart]

Haha I forgot to send a pic of what i got so far....

It might be helpful if i did!

Here ya go:

[DjVoyager]

Who brought the Christmas tree under water? The glow is working nicely.

I would suggest removing the lens flare. It's usually used to impose the idea of strong sunlight. Since your scene is underwater and at night, I think, you don't need it.

[soulfeltart]

Hey Dj,

I thought the same thing about the lens flare- too much- and there ain't no sun at the bottom of the ocean! So... Lens flare is gone as it makes sense not to have it

I just got over excited sometimes! haha :eek:

Thanks for the feedback!!

[vfxme]

I would recommend creating some sort of underwater reef dwelling plant or the like for the tree, instead of the standard livingroom fir tree. Just a though. :)

[soulfeltart]

Here's the latest render of my scene, I still have a little bit more to do as far as final touches are concerned!

I also feel compelled to attempt some rigging/animation, but can't promise anything right now, as I am pretty new to cg.... we shall see!:eyeRoll

Anyways, what do you guys think?

[Mayagician]

It's certainly coming along well :) Just remember this isn't due till Jan 31st so you still have ages to fine tune everything.

Though one bit of advice I could offer though is watch your camera angles and overall image composition. Right now that large rock in the foreground is covering quite a lot of your scene.

Hope this helps :)

[soulfeltart]

@ Mayagician:

Hey, thanks for your advice, but thats no rock!- haha

Its a little turtle, that woke up to find Santa slipping presents under his tree!

I wanted the camera positioned overhead just behind him, sort of like from his point of view

And Santa sees him and signals him to be quiet, because everyone knows that Santa likes to be covert in his deliveries!

I know I have a lot more time and am working at refining it some more

Thank you though for your comment- it looks like I can define the little guy some more so that he doesn't look so much like a rock- haha

[brandeil]

Looks real good! !

[soulfeltart]

Here is my final render with my added Candy Cane Sleigh!! I hope you guys like it.

Good luck everyone! :dance

Jesse

[DjVoyager]

Nice! :)

One suggestion: You might wanna lighten up Merry Christmas in the back so it pops out a little.

[soulfeltart]

Good eye DJ!

Haha- I accidently deleted the light for the text while trying to clean up the scene for final render

Ill post tomorrow after I get the light back

Thanks- I appreciate it