Maldon on the mud

Maldon is a very special place in Essex, its well known for its unusal mudy tidal estuarys where you can see boats and ships beached as the tide oes out. I wanted to model this as I had a feeling this would create some great atmospheres, and an atractive scene.

I used a plane and for the material I actualy used a "Mould" image, as It looked like the swirls in mud. I raised the specular level up high to create a shiny wet look to the material.


Next I added water to the scene by using a plane, that I materialsed with animated "Noise" bump. I also added a raytarced reflection, which will reflcet the background that I will put in. I made the colour of that material a muddy brown, as the water at maldon is exactly that.


I used this other plane on an angle to create the skyline and otherside of the water. I applied a gold "Chrome" affect to it, that worked really well (Without Specular level) as it had layers to show distance of the horizon and also it has the correct colours for the scene.


I took the plank from the Burnham scene and added it as a jetty in the mud, I used the same materials as before as they work really well. I placed them into the mud and moved the mud plane up into i so it looks like muds up against the wood.


I made another boat from the shell of the original one. I tried to make it look like another large ship by giving it diferent masts, an upper deack and wheel house.


Here I am putting together what I have done so far and preparing for the lighting and cameras. I place the ships where I want them whilts looking through a camera that I set up in the correct position. I try to stage my renders as you would when taking a photo, with close, midground and backgroud infomation to take in or objects to look at.



I used a few Omni Lights in this scene, I applied a lens effect to the main light sorce and placed it up in the clouds of my background. This lens affect has the ability to glow like a sun or buld, I very much like using these on landscape renders as it really adds atmosphere into the staging. I colourised the ight to match the clouds and scene and also the glow itself. I used raytraced shadows to create a nice detailed shadow map around then scene of all the models.



Here is a final still render of the scene, you can see the glowing sun, the reflective mud and the way the boats sit in the mud itself. Although the water is coloured brown, it still reflects the blue of the sky which is exactly what I wanted, as when the water was coloured blue it was too bright and looked like a swimming pool.

I made the camera pan to the right using the keyframes and selecting the lens of the camera I wanted aswell to fil the veiwfinder perectly. I made some of the boats rock slightly in the water, aswell as animating the water itself. I achive this by changing the phase on the "Noise" bump of the material, when timed correctly this water will ripple very calmly and realisticaly.