Animating the scene...

Now i had modelled the scene I can begin to animate it. The camera is fairly simple and will pan along the pier, then zoom into the sunset. This scene will be 200 frames long which equates to roughly 6 seconds and 30 fps.

During the scene I want the water to move and look like it is real. To do this I set a key frame at the beginning. This determins where the movement will start. I then opened up the material editor. Under the noise bump there is a usefull function called phase. This determines where the noise will appear. The default is set at 0, so I increased it to 3 and set another set another key frame at frame 100. I then adjust it again to 6 and set another key frame at frame 200. This is the perfect speed for the water to look calm and moving slightly with the wind.




I also rendered anothe scene. this time looking toward the seafront form the pier. I used all the same modeling. I deleted the evening sun omni and inserted a very high up, low light omni that would immatate the moon. I placed a sphere, wrapped in a moon surface, infront of it to make it look realistic. The omni glowed around it and gave the effect of a crisp winters evening by the seafront. Exactly what I was after. The omni also reflected off of the water.

To create the seafront I just used a plane, with a bitmap image of the seafront lights on it. As the water moves, this gives the affect of a busy seafront with glistening lights.