Horizon Line

[Mark Kitchens]

Hello all,

 

I have begun creating animations recently of large architectural developments and have a question about how to create nice horizon lines in the distance. I have seen some animations on others sites that have distant trees, buildings and even beautiful sky with clouds and sun. I'm wondering how these things are created. Right now I'm using 3D Studio Max and have tried out a plug-in to do horizon lines but the results are nothing like what I've seen in other animations. Can anyone give me some info on how to acomplish realistic horizons with sky, clouds, trees, buildings and such?

 

I've looked into a couple of other products like Vue 5 Pro and even downloaded a demo but the models I'm creating in Max don't import very well.

 

What's the best solution? Any ideas?

 

Thanks,

Mark

[Ernest Burden III]

The easiest way to do this is to create a sphere or cubicVR object with some appropriate backdrop image mapped onto it. You make the object self-illuminated and keep it from casting or recieving GI or shadows. You want it to be really big, if possible, to avoid it appearing 'obvious' how you did it.

 

Place the horizon of the object at the height of the camera. If the camera makes BIG changes in height you can track the changes, bit for minor changes the backdrop doesn't need to follow them.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

...as for your modeled ground plane, i usually make the extents of the site a circle rather than a square. nothing says fake on a horizon line like seeing the corner of a site model.

[Mark Kitchens]

Thanks for the reply. I'll give these things a try. Does anyone know of some good tutorials online for creating a realistic sphere and ground plane for large area models?

 

Mark