'Ocean'
Creating a convincing animation of the ocean has to be a challenge for any LightWaver. Its infinitely varying pattern of reflections, its transparency and refractive qualities will be the subject of many hours of trial and error.
Here, after umpteen attempts, I got this passable resemblance. This LightWave scene involves only two very simple objects. A flat plane for the water surface and a similar flat plane for the sea bed. Each plane was given a fractal noise/colour texture, the sea surface in the form of a bump mapping routine.
A photo of some clouds was used as a backdrop and as a reflection map for the sea surface. Several lights were used to help the highlighting and a dummy sun in the form of a point light source was located coincident with the glow on the backdrop. A bit of flaring added the final touch to the render.
If you'd like to create this scene for yourself, check out the details in Tutorial 5.
ADDENDUM: This image was selected to grace the cover of the book 'Horizons in Buddhist Psychology' published by the Taos Institute in 2006.
