Preserved Topic: If it wasn't for the water..

..I think this might approach believable in some small way. We had a great aurora display a few nights ago and I was trapped in a heavily light polluted place but studied hard. Turned out the aurora part was fairly easy thanks to good ol' polar coords. I worked real hard on the tree.. then worked some more.. then some more. Weadah.. you have patience man. Anyway.. what can I do with the reflection? A better d-map? I tried painting it but.. nevermind, it was ugly. All those distort filters look like, well, distort filters. Rip away..

Aurora 129K

-cyoung

I for one am pretty damn impressed. I'll leave the suggestions for improvement up to the more experienced inmates.

Very nice start


Reflections on water will be horizontally oriented...so the breaks in the lines should all be horizontal for a realistic reflection.

They will also be laying across the top of the water, which means that as they come closer to you (lower on the screen), they will increase in size like any other entity would - they follow the rules of perspective.

{{edit}} a displace map can be used very well here. If you haven't already, check out Steve's Displace Tutorial, and pay particular attention when he displaces the shadow for the big floating rock thing...



[This message has been edited by DL-44 (edited 11-09-2001).]

oohhhh....

the light needs to be reflected off the water.

nice though...

::::izzay

So y ou painted this from something you saw?

Ooooh. I'm soooo jealous. Must have been stunning.

*slaps self*

Thanks guys! I'm gonna go look at that tut again.. print the sucker or capture it or somethin this time! I'll post a link when I improve the water.

edit: Posted just after Steve. Well.. uh. The sky is fairly accurate by what I saw, minus the light pollution. The tree and water are small improvements on street lights and telephone lines.

-cyoung

[This message has been edited by cyoung (edited 11-09-2001).]

Displace. Just gave it a quick run for a bit of waviness.



Something like that. Noise, Motion Blur, Levels. Then I made a selection and Free Transformed it to the Canvas, you know, made the selection to fit the canvas. Then I did a small Motion Blur to smooth it out.

Works for me.

edit: Updated the pic to the right one. Also, only horizontal for Displace. If you do vertical, keep it slight. Well, who knows? Maybe you'll want more vertical.


[This message has been edited by warjournal (edited 11-09-2001).]

DL, what you said about the reflection getting bigger closer up isn't *entirely* true. It should be a mirror image that's distorted. In a mirror image, it's not like you're looking at a projection of the bright object, it's more like the object actually exists twice, equally far away, but in slightly different directions, and distorted by the shape of the reflecting object (ripples in the water).

The way ripples work, the distortion will be like the horizontal wind that warjournal just mentioned, but it will also sort of be stretched vertically on the image; that's because both ripples close and far away are likely to reflect towards the bright object, but to the side they're less likely to reflect it.

[Edit: Oh, no, I see what DL was saying. There's less distortion close up then there is farther away - farther away, lots of ripples are affecting the reflection, so it looks more random, sorta.]

[This message has been edited by Slime (edited 11-09-2001).]

Gettin better.. 160K

too much stars in the sky. and it also seems, as if they were a pattern or something like this.

the water-ripples should get smaller at the horizon.

and you have somekind of light-source in the middle of the screen. but shouldnt the light come from the moon?

The stars are noise on black set to screen over a blue gradient used for the sky.. I like lots of stars, there are lots of stars in really dark places. The ripples do get smaller with distance now. The light source in the middle is kinda the whole point of the thing. Maybe more light from the moon would be in order just the same.. hmm

-cyoung

I don't have anything handy to prove this, but recollection is that with a light source (sun or moon) that low in the sky the reflection would extend all the way to the horizon, not be sort of concentrated in a circular shape. Must say I've seen more sunrises than moon rises over the ocean (what does that say about me?), but close your eyes and picture it. If you want to be analytical about it, think about the angle of reflection: considering the distance of the moon compared with your height, you are nearly on the same plane as the mirror in this case.

And regardless of what is "true", the subjective reality is that the reflection will look smaller in the distance.

[This message has been edited by Steve (edited 11-10-2001).]

images.google.com backs your theory Steve. Damn.. it's all wrong.
Thanks man.

Shouldn't the reflections actually be closer to the horizon than the objects they reflect, especially if the object is farther away than the edge of the water (or horizon in this case)?

Take a look at these pics for reference...
http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/manoli/gallery/view/handcock_burning.jpg
http://www.naturalvisions.com/New%20Images/NH%20Fall%20Reflection.jpg

D

I like it ~Vp~

1) better

2) Slime - yes, a mirror image, but a mirror of a 3D object on a horizontal surface. As such, it is subject to the effects of perspective from the viewers vantage point.

3) As Steve and Ducati have said, the reflection will be much closer, or right on the horizon in this situation.

4) The colors should have atleast a faint reflection in the water as well, I would think...although that may not be the case...

5) the ripples - check out the 'perspective' option under 'edit >> transform' - it can be useful (try applying the effect in a seperate image, much larger than your workspace).

Hey Drakkor - your first link there is of my fair city, Boston. Yeahh! Lotsa jokes about that river, the Charles River, where they offer community sailing lessons downstream from MIT! The threat of whatever maelevolent effluent might dribble out of the student labs is a real incentive *not* to fall in!

Heh. The link spelled "Hancock" wrong!
~smirk~

Here, I raytraced this image, it may give you an idea of what it should look like:



Note that the ripples don't just get small near the horizon, they get *tiny* - indistinguishably small.

As for your stars, I also say there are a little too dense; but I'd also like to see some bigger and brighter ones here and there.

Thanks guys. You've given me much to think about and play with. Probably won't get much time this weekend though. My cousin the truck driver has popped in since he got hung up for the weekend in Chicago and I live only 3 hours from there. Wouldn't want to risk turning him into a geek w/computer stuff ya know.

Raytracers.. I have pov-ray lurking about this hard disk somewhere, always get mixed up with what I do/don't need to include and such. Very much prefer working visually but I've seen some awesome stuff done with that little app.

-cyoung

edit: He left early.

[This message has been edited by cyoung (edited 11-12-2001).]