Liquid Glass

Did you ever see the movie The Abyss? It came out in 1989, was directed by James Cameron (of Avatar fame), and starred Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. It had a cool liquid effect of a creature that was pure water, and could form the water into any shape it desired, even mimicing Mary Elizabeth's face.

Blender has a very useful object called lattices. They are just a 3D array of points, in an empty cube. You can move any of the points around, which deforms the overall shape so its not a cube anymore. The tricky part is you can take any other object, and modify it with the lattice, which deforms the shape of that object in the same way the lattice is deformed. If you look at the animation below, you will see a sphere that changes shape, being deformed by the invisible lattice. The lattice is not actually changing shape, its just moving through and around the sphere.

Plus I was able to make the sphere semi-transparent. As it stretches, you can see the back of the sphere visible through the middle. It gives a really cool watery, glassy effect.

Click to see video

The animation took 37 minutes to render, but quite a bit longer to get just the right material. It has 3 textures on it, clouds, a blend, and marble. And of course I had to turn on ray-tracing to get the transparency. It can also be viewed as a looping video. James Cameron would be happy to see the progress I am making in my lessons.

Seawater

Not long ago I visited the Hamptons, and had a great day at the beach with some fun people. The water was a bit too rough on the sea itself, so we went to a beach on the other side in the bay. Much smaller waves, and not so windy. Charlotte had to chase the giant goose as it was blown down the beach (I didn't say not windy at all). You are probably wondering what a giant goose is doing on the beach - it was a blow up one, and we floated on it on the water. Not your first guess I imagine.

Everyone enjoyed themselves. Ari got a bit of a shock when he woke up and found himself nose to claw with a spider crab. He likes fish and turtles, but is not so fond of crabs. We had a nice lunch, got a little too much sun, and heard a fun story from Emily about her first visit to the States, how she was stranded, and how everyone in a strange town looked after her so well.

The water was perfect shades of blue, as you can see in the photo below. Perhaps though after looking at this you realize there is something wrong with this picture. Can't put your finger on exactly what it is? Or maybe you have guessed already.

Actually, its not a photo at all. It is of course another pic generated by Blender. It is 3 separate layers, each one perfectly flat, but transparent, and with procedural textures added to them to create the illusion of waves. Large waves, and medium and small waves. And affecting the way the light reflects off it. It is amazing what some random numbers and the right algorithm can do.

That evening we met a lovely couple that lived in the area, and went out to a seafood place that served the freshest fish I have had in a long time. It had probably just jumped out of the sea that afternoon. I could render some fish next, but they just won't be the same as the real thing.