The image seems a little small to permit the grand scope of what you set out to do. However, the stars and tori swept across the background do give off the impression of majesty. The boat, however, is poorly textured, starting from the actual wood of the hull, and continuing with the ropes (which seem to go off at right angles in a couple of places), and finishing off with very little depth of field when it comes to the entrance into the ship (the black. a negative bolean might solve it). Also, I'm not sure if you meant for the sails to be transparent, but it certainly comes off as poor, especially since they seem to reflect rather than 'transpare'. The idea is great, it seems like you have the beginnings of a great piece of work, what you need to concentrate on is: 1. textures. find good wooden ones at www.animax.it. also be sure to scale them. 2. depth. either forget the little entrance alltogether or negative bolean it 3. reflections and transparencies. find a good cloth texture (even the simple gray might work if the lighting is proper) 4. field of view. take away from the ship and concentrate on the beautiful view outside. after all, it's the stuff dreams are made of. 5. 'animate' it. an unmanned wheel (or whatever the thing you steer ships with is called) perhaps might be better than the little entrance, therefore giving even more away on the idea of dreams and how we never tend to follow up on them :) hope this helps, and that i didn't come off as too critical. best of luck! Draculaz 8400444 mihnea@freewriters.ca

Yes, as above, especially No. 1. If you don't have textures, check out some on the web. I just went looking for a wicker texture. First site I came across had "free texture of the week - WICKER" at 1000 x 1000! Because I'm lazy, that pleased me. But you can normally find something pretty quick if you're just looking for wood or cloth or something.

Nothing like giving it to 'em straight eh Drac? The Bryster (Chris)

I only expect the same for mine :)

Thanks for the feedback so far. I'll tell you the problems I have had and maybe some of you can suggest fixes. 1)Wood texture: actually looks pretty good in the jpg I found. It renders out like this, even using the anti-aliasing. I can try scaling it to see if that looks better. 2)The entrance to the little house: A negative boolean looked weird and worse than the black doorway. Without it it is just a smooth wall which also looks weird. I tried a steering wheel, but the boom would swing across where you would stand to steer. 3)I liked the transparent look of the sails, but if most people would rather see solid, I can do solid. 4)I added the rope piles to make the deck more interesting, but then they weren't conneted to the lines on the ship, so I added a cylendar to make the connection. Apparently it doesn't go over well. 5)View: I could scoot the camera closer to the bow (and remove the little house thing completely) or I could make the canvas bigger. Perhaps leaning over the railing? Lin

Hi again Lin, I think your idea with making the texture smaller might work, although I don't understand why it's not rendering correctly (try parametric scaled). For me it looks like the texture just isn't good enough. If you're intent on keeping it, then go ahead and make it smaller, otherwise I would suggest getting a larger resolution one :) I think whether you have the negative bolean or not in the little house, the point is to change the lighting so that the entranceway doesn't look as 'off' in terms of depth. You might also try giving the same texture to the house, that way eliminating the contrast between the light wood and the deep black. At most, you can use photoshop to slightly blur the edges of the black, therefore giving away a slight notion of actual darkness. As for the sails, by all means keep them. You're not here to please us, you're here to please yourself. The point I was trying to make was that the sails look more reflective than transparent (because of the displacement of the material). If you look closely, you can see how the rope ends in one place and starts off in another once you look through the sail. The best advice incorporating your wishes would be to simply apply another material to the sail instead of metal and glass and give it a 40-45% transparency. Even simple gray works. You can solve a lot of your problems in regards to populating the deck by simply changing the camera angle as you've suggested. Perhaps over the railing would be a good idea, although I can't exactly picture the angle. Anything to make your job easier would work. The trick isn't as much in the detail sometimes. Also, one last suggestion would be to use something called Universe (Briard Software I believe). Bryce stars have a tendency to be extremely ugly. Using this tool instead in postwork would not only give you more freedom with the positioning of the stars, but it would also make you happy (lol). All the best again, I have too much time on my hands ;) drac

I like it. There's a lot you can do with this theme, but for some reason it does put me back in the tuna boat days when I used to lay on the helo pontoon and look at the sky. Thanks.

Maybe after Booleaning a doorway you could put a squashed cube and texture it as a door. I like this composition, Lin.

I agree on the points made about the wood texture. Nice composition.

If the cabin is hollow, you could try putting some navigation gear or maps inside with a lantern on a table. If it is not hollow a door would be good.