August2010: Contest Winner!

[DjVoyager]

Congratulations spam_septic!
The winner of the August's contest - Seafaring Vessels.


spam_septic: Nautor Club Swan 42 - Phantom

http://vimeo.com/14597931

We received a wonderful set of entries for August, showcasing some amazing modeling and rendering skills. Phantom's setup, a boat sailing in the middle of the deep blue sea with no sailor caught our attention.

spam_septic will receive a $50 Gift certification for Amazon and a place on the next DT Newsletter.:)

Now for everyone's viewing pleasure, here are the rest of the remarkable entries for Seafaring Vessels.



Grisou: Stealthy boat

http://vimeo.com/14541380


Gadgetfun: Sunseeker Yacht

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05CanZPmoGE


abdool86: Christopher Columbus
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/5363/shiped.jpg

[chrisg]

Great entries this month!

[Gadgetfun]

Congrats spam_septic! great job! :)

[stwert]

Congratulations spam_septic, simply gorgeous! I love the motion in it. Gadgetfun, great detail and rendering, thumbs up. Grisou, very cool concept, nicely done. Abdool86, sweet modelling and well done on the render.
If I may offer some constructive criticism: Spam_septic, I think I already said this, but the boat itself is a bit static, some slight motion in the sails would have been the sprinkles on the icing on the cake.
Grisou, the ship could use some secondary motion (rolling etc) and some follow-through and/or ease in/out in the stopping and extending.
Gadgetfun, the water looks a bit scaled up; it looks too smooth.
Abdool86, the sails and water could both use some more shape, they look quite flat to me. (Might be a calm day, but both are a bit too calm to be natural).

Great job all round! Again, very nice work, it gives me motivation when I see these entries.

[DjVoyager]

Excellent critique, stwert.

Spam_septic's Phantom: Love the modeling and even the overall motion of the boat, but I agree with stwert that a bit of disturbance in the sails from time to time would have given an idea of the presence of strong winds. Sometimes implied presence has a much stronger affect than physical presence.

Gadgetfun's Sun Seeker: Well, that's a dream yacht right there. Beautiful modeling and rendering, though I can't help but feel that it's in a bath tub rather than at sea :).

Grisou's Stealthy boat: stwert said it best, though I really like the animation at the end.

Abdool86's Christopher Columbus: Not sure if this was intended but the shadow of the ship kind of creates an illusion that it's anchored in a lagoon. Perhaps adding some rocks and showing a bit of a nearby island to cover the gray of the horizontal line would have added a bit of excitement to the scene. Very nice modeling of the ship.

Overall, great job all who participated. With each of these projects your skills improve, and considering suggestions and critiques from members can open new creative ideas for your future projects :).

[spam_septic]

Thanks, everyone. I appreciate the sentiments and comments. I, too, would have liked to see the sails moving... and some spray and foam from the water where the boat cut through the waves. I just didn't have time to learn and execute all of that in the contest period. A captain would have been nice too. Maybe I'll add those things in the future. DT has some RealFlow5 lessons now, so I'll see if there are any tidbits in there that will help with the spray and foam.

Any suggestions on how to make the sails move? I spent a bit of time trying to use Softimage cloth, but that didn't work too well and I scrapped the idea. Would Syflex be better? Any good ideas on how to fake it without using a simulation?

Cheers,
e.

[stwert]

You could potentially use a lattice over the sails and use the control points to do large scale flaps and undulations. Possibly even pipe an expression into the controls for randomness. Since the sails are quite taut I think you could get away without a sim, since there's not going to be a ton of cloth specific behaviour, if that makes sense. Anyway, the animation works well as is, especially considering the time limits.

[spam_septic]

Thanks, Stwert. I'll give that a try. Maybe I can create a deformed using ICE to control the lattice.

[Dean]

Congrats to the winner!!! and everonye else really cause there are some really nice entries !!!

[Kerem]

First one is great. Only thing that bothers me that there's no foam where water meets the hull...