Creation of an Underwater Environment
I just posted a tutorial for all you 3d artists out there on how to create an underwater environment. The underwater tutorial has the step by step breakdown, but I also thought it would be useful to write about the process and steps it takes to create such an environment.
1. Creation of models
I like to start any 3d scene I make by creating the models in the scene. I tend to model them in separate 3ds Max files and then merge them into one final scene later. It helps to have a standard size, or something your can compare to so that your models are all relative sizes. This can cut down on how much you have to scale objects to make them fit your environment. I modeled the shark using a spline cage. I found a great reference photo of a bull shark from the side view, which helped greatly in modeling the shark. Making use of reference photos will actually help make your models feel more lifelike and accurate. The other models in the scene (pillars, submarine, plants) were created using standard box modeling techniques. The ground was created from a plane with a noise modifier on it.
2. Creation of environmental effects
After all models are built, I start creating the environment. As mentioned, the ground or the ocean bottom was created with a plan and a noise modifier. I have seen tutorials in which it is recommended to create a plane for the top of the water. This depends on if you wish the top of the water to be visible. In this scene, it is not so I did not need to create a top plane. It helps to understand what underwater looks like when creating an underwater scene. The further you look underwater, the foggier it gets. I used the environmental effect fog to create the haziness of underwater. Also, light reflecting on the water causes an effect called caustics. I created this effect by using a spotlight casting down on the scene. I put a caustic map on the projector and added a volume light to the spotlight. This created the streaking filtered light and caustic effect on the ocean bottom. This was added in addition to standard lighting of the scene. The glow on the submarine in the background was created in 3d Studio Max’s video post. As you can imagine, this can be quite a strain on computer performance, so as I continued working, I turned off the advanced environmental effects.
3. Creating good materials
The best way to create a good material is to get your lighting set and finalized first before creating a material. There’s nothing worse than creating an amazing material in 3d Studio Max’s default lighting and then adding custom lights only to see your wonderful material look like total crap. The shark texture was created using unwrap UVW, texporter and Photoshop. I added slight bump map to add some depth to the skin. I wanted to see the reflection on blues in the sharks as they swam by, so I added a slight gradient of blue and purple as a specular map to give it that sheen. I used a diffuse map of marble and a slight bump map to create the pillars material. The plants were given just a standard green material with low specularity. Once the materials were finalized, I worked on tweaking the scenes materials to setup for my camera shot.
4. Creating the movie
The sharks were custom rigged using only 4 bones and splines as handles to control the movement. I created 2 splines for an animation path for the sharks to follow and balanced the weight between the two paths to give a more fluid movement. The submarine was animated using autokey. I gave movement to the bubbles emitting form the submarine (they were created using particles) by using a vortex and gravity space warp. I made the gravity negative because bubbles rise to the surface when underwater.
I don’t remember how long it took me to render a scene; I just remember praying that my computer didn’t crash. (should have done PNG Sequence, but back then but what did I know). There are many different ways to create an underwater scene, and perhaps the way I made mine isn’t the most efficient for rendering, but it looks pretty cool, and that’s why I love 3d in the first place. With great power come great responsibility. Is anyone reading this?
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Comments
Thanks Adrian. The plants were box modeled using renderable splines and low poly leaves. The pillars were cylinders and boxes. The shark was built using a spline cage, and then putting a surface on it. I rigged the sharks using forward kinematics. I have tutorial (almost complete) I can post on how to model the shark which might help.
excellent work man, i really like it.. my only question is, how did u make the sea life?, any way you can help me with that woudl be wonderful thanks alot