Normally I wouldn't post a quickie test render of a new product, but I was pleasantly surprised by something and thought it couldn't hurt to share. I'd set this scene up with no background, rendered against black, intending to add an ocean background later, using the alpha channel. As you can see there would be no point in doing that. The AtmosPhere creates a realistic enough volumetric depth effect. This is really cool for those of us who use Poser 4. I can forsee using it to create fog and other effects. I had to reduce the size of the 4k x 4k Aquatica Reef texture maps to get them to render, but I'm glad I did. This is a really beautiful prop. Thanks, DAZ.

Breathe-taking! And this is P4 only? Wow! Definitely put that one in your gallery and be proud of it.

I saw the ad for this product on Daz's website, great stuff. I, unfortunately, lack aquatic animals to properly stock a reef like this so I don't think I'll buy right now. Good work though, and I will definitely keep it in mind for the future.

Attached Link: http://www.toucan.co.jp/product/3ds/3dsFrameSet.html

Thanks for the kind words! To be fair, I added a bit of shadow and lightened the picture a little in PSP, but other than that the underwater effects were achieved in Poser. Check the link to Toucan's site for some free beautiful fish and sea mammal models including 4 used in the above render. They're .3ds format, which works fine in Poser, although the fish aren't poseable, and you might have to apply the textures manually. Still, Toucan's fish are fantastic.

I bought it and the v3 mer tail, it ( the mertail) over wrote the reefs readme so I can't find it( yes I have way too much stuff in my runtime) where is it . . .Prop, figure?? help!!!!

great work :) wow...toucan has many fish... plus DAZ has most of their aquatic life for cheap as well...

ooooooooo, pretty!!!

I was hesitating over the reef, but that image sold me! Now if $day would just get here a bit faster ;)

Hi I like it but I just wish people would stop putting up these great images ;-) What with buying Vicki3 this month and having to go find some hair that works (thinking pony tail) and then the mermaid fish and the reef..... Oh well if I'm going to go bankrupt my card well it's better if I do it for something I enjoy!!! I'm begining to hate Daz for all their products Dave

Hi Dean, I got the aquatica reef to render fairly quickly without any modifications to the reef texture maps; however, with the atmosphere (even without aquatica reef), the renders took a long time (on a P4 1.8 GHz, 512 RAM, 64 MB video RAM, 7200 rpm 60 GB HDD, Win XP Pro, Poser 4.03). Did you experience this as well? How long did it take to render your image and is there a way to speed up renders with just the atmosphere (I don't think it uses any texture maps), e.g. for foggy or underwater scenes, etc. And how did you do those great-looking "shafts of light" effect?

The reef looks very nice ... but I'm more interested in the AtmosPhere .... I want to know how its built, to see what else can be done with it. BTW... where did you get that lovely nurse shark?

The Atmosphere can be made different colrs and such. The image above can be done as a straight render if the AtmoSphere is made white. Red yellow are cool too. I am so hesitant to explain how I made it less someone rips it off next week, but it is like a giant onion flat in the front. It uses no texture just straight trans. All of the scene is kept within it and the front of it always faces the camera. It is great for smoke, fog, haze etc with different settings

Lyrra, the shark is by Toucan, you can find it at the link, above. Lots of cool fish models, there. Enjoy! I'm looking forward to trying out the prop without the reef, with different hues assigned, as Anton had suggested. Arendar, I have less RAM than you, so yeah, the AtmoSphere slows down the render a bit. I don't mind, though, the effect is worth waiting for. The light was mostly done in Poser with spotlights and soft shadows but I also used a Sapphire filter (sorry, don't remember which one, it came with a recent issue of Computer Arts) in PSP to add that diagonal effect.

I forgot to say what a cool image this is BTW thats for liking it.

Thank you very much, Anton. It was a pleasure to get some nice eye candy without really trying, so I look forward to really trying. :-)

Anton, well anyone who buys it will know how its built. But it is a good idea, and that's kind of what I thought it was. I'm thinking thoughts about caustics, clouds and leafdapple... (I'll be buying it Sat, when my money shows up grin) Lyrra

Well, I finally found it in the environment folder under charicters, Thanks so much, I hope they fix the readme so other don't have this probablem ( though it was likly just me as no one else said any thing).