Bongo's environment


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In 2003 Renderosity Magazine asked me to write a tutorial about the creation of the underwater environment I made for the character Bongo. The tutorial was published on issue n. 5 and, because of the agreement, I couldn't post the tut elsewhere before 9 months had passed from the publication's date.
But now, the time has came!

The first thing to do is of course to model the main character, Bongo itself: how I made this is clearly explained step by step in the previous tutorial. As the Bongo model is ready, place the camera to have the right view angle of it: now is time to start to make the environment. First, the water's surface.

The water surface

Switch to a different layer and go in top view (NUMPAD 7 on the keyboard). Press the SPACEBAR and choose ADD > MESH > PLANE from the popup window. Blender adds the plane, at the cursor location, already in "Edit mode" and with all the four vertices selected; so press the W key and SUBDIVIDE the plane several times, at least seven to obtain enough faces. This is a step we must do to later apply properly the wave effects to the water's surface. Now go to side view (NUMPAD 3) and place the cursor a lot down from the plane but keep it in the centre of its length. With the plane again in "Edit mode" (TAB) and with all the vertices selected (A) press SHIFT- W and apply a Warp, to obtain a rounded surface around Bongo (the Warp works on the ground of the cursor position).

Press TAB and exit the plane from "Edit mode". Keep the plane still selected and go to the Animation window (F7) and select NEW Effect.

By default, a "Build" effect will appear in the button on the right: press on it and switch to a "Wave" effect.

In the setting display that will appear digit:
Sta x = 0.00
Sta y = 0.00
(this two values are for the starting co-ordinates of the wave)
Speed = 0.500
Height = -0.318
Width = 1.500
Narrow = 1.500
Time sta = -92.00 (the frame at which the wave begin)
Lifetime = 288.00
Damptime = 10.00
Select both X and Y and Cycl buttons too.

And this is for the first Wave effect. Now press on NEW Effect again; a second Wave effect, perfectly equal to the first, will be added.
Do this for other two times and now we have four identical Wave effects applied to the plane.
In the second Wave change these values: Sta x = 1.00, Sta y = 2.00, Width = 2.068 and deselect Y.
In third Wave: Sta x = 2.00, Sta y = -3.00 and deselect X and Cycl, Width = 3.318.
And in fourth Wave: Sta x = 1.00 , Sta Y = 2.00 and Width = 5.000.

At this point the plane should be deformed in a randomly way. Looking in the camera view, I cut away the vertices out of sight.

The water surface material
Go to the Material editor (F5) and add a new material to the plane. Set the colour R = 0.273, G = 0.427 and B = 0.456; Spec = 0.000 and Hard = 1, Ref = 0.800, Emit = 0.300 and Amb = 1.000 (Ambient: this sets how much the colour of the object will be affected by the World colour... but we are going to see this very soon). Switch to the Texture window (F6) and in the first slot load the texture plugin "T_Marble" (you can download it for free here); in the second slot load a caustic image (you can find several kinds on the web, or else you can make one by yourself with the free program Caustics Generator v1.2 by Kjell Andersson).

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