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This project, “Boat” is an image created by Keytoon Animation Studio for work that required photorealistic aspects. We worked on the image for about five days, modeling, texturing, shading, and the rendering. As usual, we used 3ds Max™, Photoshop™ for texture work, and Maxwell Render™ 1.1. With the help of Maxwell Render™, we obtained a satisfying final result, with an original resolution of 1285x2500.
We started out by looking for references of different boats and loads of images of beaches, rivers and oceans to see how the water materials behave. Once we had collected all the necessary information, we worked on the embodiment of the boat, selecting those elements we liked most from all the different boats we had collected.
After we had decided on the preferred look of the boat, we started to work on the model. It had to be very detailed as the image had to be printed on a huge seven meter poster. So we had to give the boat every little detail we could possibly think of, to later strengthen it with the texturing. As we were working on the model, we slightly adjusted the composition and a little later we started with the texturing. We used Photoshop and with the help of pictures we took with a digital camera we created the textures for all the different parts of the boat, meanwhile adding details and changing textures to be able to achieve what we had in mind.
Once we had finished the modeling and texturing of the boat, the only thing left to do was making the sea. After we had seen millions of pictures, it had become clear that we had to use a displacement map for the water volume, which was still not sufficient after we did some tests. Since the material was done only with reflection, it looked very poor because from the camera position you were unable to see the reflection of the boat on the water and this did not help to add realism to the image. So we thought it would be necessary to model the bottom of the ocean and to play as well with the refraction.
After we worked on the modeling of the bottom of the ocean, we modeled some rocks with displacement and textured them.
We then started to work on the water material. The base had to be a material with refraction and with – above all – a correct attenuation to obtain a depth-effect. Apart from that we needed to achieve a good refraction ND to obtain a credible distortion. After we finished with this layer, we had the transparent part solved, but we were still dealing with the reflection problem. We created a second reflection layer with a high roughness to give a good volume to the sea, and finally we created a third layer with roughness 0 and a ND of 1.6 to give it a beautiful Freshnell effect that provided the final aspect for the water.
All the shades of the layers were tested to give them the characteristics of a turquoise sea, which gave a sensation of prettiness to the final image. The foam in between and on the edges of the waves was made in Photoshop with matte painting. It adds some extra realism and movement to the image.
The creation of all the materials for the sea would have been impossible without the help of Maxwell’s material layers. Maxwell offers so much control over every phase of material creation, but you don’t loose touch, it remains personal.
Finally, the only thing missing was the illumination of the scene, which was not going to be difficult. We only had to simulate a sunny day, which was easy with Maxwell’s physical sky. We made good use of tone mapping to create a nice contrast and equilibrium between air and color. We almost reached the point of image saturation. But most importantly: we created a very attractive, satisfying image.
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