Caribbean...finally done!

[Hannes]

Sure. I'll have to take a break because I'll be on vacation for two weeks, but when the scene is finished I will be sharing my secrets 

[Hannes]

The last image before I'll fly to Greece. This one is rendered with the final quality settings. It took almost 9 hours to render in this resolution!
The whole animation is 900 frames long. That means a total render time of 75 days!!! What have I done? Why didn't I choose a simple desert scene?
Anyway, see you in two weeks!

[Henry Blewer]

Awesome look. Have a great time.

[domdib]

Happy holidays. The wake of the ship is awesome. Now all you need are a few dolphins sporting ahead of the ship, a couple of mermaids, some flying fish...

[Oshyan]

Looks stunning! We'll see if we can't get that 9 hours down to something more reasonable when I get my hands on it.

- Oshyan

[dandelO]

Game over, ball's burst!

[domdib]

You forgot "ba's on the slates, tea's oot"  

(Colloquial Scottishisms for those wondering)

[Dune]

This sure is a potential winner, unless the unknown contributors hold out until the last minute. But if this wins the animation prize, it'll give Oshyan quite something to do! Great work, Hannes!

[freelancah]

Holy C**P! This is awesome!

[Hannes]

Kalimera alltogether!!
Back again from helping the greek solving their financial problems (by drinking as much greek wine and Mythos beer as I could!).
I had very much inspiration for my sea surface standing on a big ferry boat and watching the white caps and the ship wake. This was really fascinating and frustrating at the same time because it's sooo complex.
Anyway right now I am trying to render a very low quality preview of the whole animation. It's going to take some time, because even at a resolution of 200X112 px with quick render settings each frame takes about 15 min to render.
BUT the deadline is July 15th! So there's a lot of time left.
Btw here is a photo I took from the wake. I love these structures!!

[Zairyn Arsyn]

Awesome render Hannes, very realistic. very, very convincing..

you should sell it on NWDA CS
(the foam, that is)

[Hannes]

Some progress I made regarding translucency. I didn't know why I couldn't get a realistic looking translucency with shadows on the backlit faces. Everything was just equally brighter.
I checked the model in 3ds max and found out that the sails weren't just displaced planes without any thickness, but somehow solid. Like displaced boxes. So I tried to delete the "double faces" and reimported the model into TG.
Example (before/after):

[inkydigit]

astonishing work here Hannes!

[Henry Blewer]

The sails look great. Your whole project is looking marvelous.

[Hannes]

Here is a (VERY LOW QUALITY!!!) preview for the whole animation. This was rendered BEFORE I fixed the translucency. I had to use frame blending again to reduce the flickering. Btw, the sun doesn't appear like the well known white cookie in better quality renders.
http://vimeo.com/13033662