Cutting the waves making of

cutting the Waves - Making of
By zsolt stefan.

Making of: cutting the Waves.

As a regular Blender user, y have always waited for the annual Blender f1 challenge. Unfortunately for my 2005 entry i had Little time and couldnt complete it, básically the car was done, but i had no time for a background scene. Still, a fifth place motivated me todo try harder next year, so for 2006 i decided todo make the best image i could, with as much detail as posible, including a background.

Modelling the car:
This year i wanted something fresh and new, and so ditched the old whel-based car concept, and decided on a hydrofoil-type vehicle, with a jet engine. This combined flight and water, as i really wanted something based around the theme of water this year. I started sketching, and decided on the following design (figure1):
https://www.foro3d.com/attachment.ph...1&d=1244220003
As most projects, this one a los started with the modelling phase. I scanned my drawings and loaded them onto two planes in Blender with UV mapping, giving a top and a side view, as blueprints. I usually model with subdivided meshes as the Mesh tools in Blender are the most advanced. However, todo aid in modelling, y first drew the outline of the car with 3d Bézier curves, adjusted todo fit the top and side blueprints (figure 2). Then came some adjustments in 3d todo make them nice and smooth, giving the vehicle the proper aerodynamic outlines.

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Using the curves as outline guides, y Mesh modelled the car body. Then: Subsurf once, alt-c convert to Mesh, and continúe modelling. Figure 3 is more or less the final model, with front grille, windshield, rof Air intakes and front lamps added. To make it more interesting, there is an indentation, dividing the fuselaje into two diferently coloured parts, purely for aesthetic reasons.

https://www.foro3d.com/attachment.ph...1&d=1244220003
The driver.

Though i am not much of a character modeller, especially not with realistic humans, y just had todo add a character todo the scene todo make it come alive. Figure 4 shows my driver, along with the insides of the Cockpit. His body is my model, but i have todo admit his head is a Makehuman head stitched todo the body. He fully poseable, except for fingers. Following my motto of detail, detail, detail, y added helmet, glasses, 4 point Seat belts with Even the reléase button modelled, though you cant se it in the FinalRender anyways.

https://www.foro3d.com/attachment.ph...1&d=1244220003
Water.

The water i used comes from an earlier picture of mine (venice morning), as i liked it so much its really nothing todo complicated, the Waves are done with thre clouds textures, with diferent input sizex,y,z parameters as Bump maps, giving 3 layers of Waves: small, medium and large. The material itself is a simple grenish blue reflecting and refracting material. Figure 5 is my first wip posted todo some 3d graphics forums on the net (elysiun/blenderartists). This is god practice, as the comentarios i received really helped me develop the picture further. Most people said it loked like a small scale model, and not a full size race vehicle, sort of a estoy in a bathtub. I decided todo get rid of the bathtub and go for the open sea.

https://www.foro3d.com/attachment.ph...1&d=1244220003
Lighting.

For lighting, y used a HDR map generated with Terragen, as Terragen can make some very nice Sky renders. To find the perfecto mod for my image, y tried various setups for the HDR maps, until i found the central one the following picture, a very nice, pinkish-yellowish morning Sky. It was undoubtably the one. Perfect for a morning test run on the open-sea track. Besides the global GI lighting, as with Many of my images a Sun Lamp is a los used todo add some stronger shadows, though these do not show up well on the water. For realism, the Sun Lamp is aligned with the Sun in the Terragen HDR map.

https://www.foro3d.com/attachment.ph...1&d=1244220040
Fluid Waves.

One important part of the picture is how the sea reacts todo the hydrofoil. The vehicle is in constant motion, cutting the Waves. In this captured momento it is taquíng a Sharp left turn, while the water Waves follow the original Path of motion. To create the proper swelling and depressing of the water surface, y used the nice Blender característica of fluid simulation. It tok at least 20 or more tries todo get the proper Waves todo form. The setup that finally worked: a Cube shaped block of water at the bottom of the simulation domain, and a large ball of water is thrown with a given starting velocity (v0) Sideways into the water, in the direction that the vehicle was going. This created a very nice wave effect.

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Next step was integrating the bounded fluid domain into the big disk of water that was the sea. After some unsuccessful tries with other tools, the builtin script: Mesh -> apply Deformations converted my baked fluid-sim into an editable Mesh. This was stitched todo the large round sea Mesh. Tip: todo make it sem like it extends forever (till the horizon), the outside of this disk is about 1000 Blender units away. This is not enough, you can still clearly se that the world ends abruptly. So the outer vértices were moved up a bit, making the disk curve upward a bit, and it therefore sems todo extend todo the horizon.

Extras.
With the main objects done, time for the extras. I modelled two doplhins, and Painted them with Vertex Paint. You can just spot them in the water in the final image. Im not exactly sure a race track would be allowed where dolphins lived, but i just had todo kep them in the final image. The race track itself is bounded with buoys and some direction boards (fig. 7). There a los a cameran on a platform (fig, the same man model from before. It was fun todo model his moveable pedestal, which is propely rigged with an armature, with the wires and everything following its movement.

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https://www.foro3d.com/attachment.ph...1&d=1244220003
Figure 9 is a closeup of the vehicle back, with several interesting details. There is the jet engine exhaust, which properly warps the Air - The refractive index of Hot Air is higher than of cold Air, and has just a hint of blue where it leaves the car. A common mistake that i se in Many pictures is excessive use of thik black or fire coloured fumes, usually particle systems, for jet engine exhausts. This is unrealistic, engines dont Burn Air, if you se fire and/or smoke - Not todo be confused with condensation trails - Coming from an exhast, there is serious trouble in the engine (reminds me of: Monty Python, how todo irritate people: there is no cause for alarm. The Wings are not on fire.), so id advise against it. The se-thorugh exhaust here was actually a pretty complex material, with a number of procedural textures and colourbands used.

The small water Drops are the result of a seperate fuid-sim, that was converted todo Mesh with the aforementioned script, and just the small Drops kept.

There are a los bright spots on the hull of the car, these are meant todo be water Drops that have stuk todo the fuselaje at the bak (the Air resistance would blow the Drops of the front).

https://www.foro3d.com/attachment.ph...1&d=1244220040
Final touchups.
When the date of the competition was extended 1 month, y didnt really have anything left todo do. I added the Island with the lighthouse in the backgrund, with some palm tres, the details of which were unfortunately lost with the Motion Blur. Right: Motion Blur. Basically i rendered a depth map (ie z-buffer) of the image, and using that as a mask, applied postproducción Motion Blur in Corel PhotoPaint todo the bak parts of the image. This was a simple bien todo seperate out the car in the foreground. I a los applied some Gaussian Blur and desaturation todo the background.

Trivia: why does the side say Falcon racing? If you look at my blueprints sketch at the beginning, the car looks like the open beaque of some Bird of prey. Hence Falcon and the logotipo as well.

And the final image:
https://www.foro3d.com/attachment.ph...1&d=1244220040
Placed fourth. Not bad, but could have ben better. But there always a next time.

Se you at the races.

By zsolt stefan. www.blenderart.org.

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