Scenes -

1. The island above water
Since the project requirements required that there where some backdrop I initially tried to use a simple polygon plane rotated 90 degrees the problem was that it was going to severely limit the motion of the camera since turning to far in one direction would reveal the empty backdrop. I then tried placing three planes together in a broken box shape the problem that then aroused was that the sky looked wrong ( which was what the planes where representing) another problem was getting the water to look right in this setup. After a bit of thought I remembered the movie the Trumen show where they used a giant sphere, it was so obvious all I had to due was look up in the sky and mother nature had the answer

The first thing I did was create a giant sphere spanning 180 degrees.Inside of it a placed a polygon plane which was the ocean, a polygon plane below that which was the ocean floor and a nurbs sphere spanning 180 degrees and sunk into the middle of the scene which would serve as a desert island instead of using my original idea of only a beach. Not only did this work better but resulted in a much richer environment where I could place clouds and a rainbow. The palm trees where then placed onto the island as well as the fire pit. After placing the palm trees I wanted the trunks of the trees to be deformed like in real life but after deforming the CVs it appeared nothing was happening. It took a while to realize that the deformations only appeared when you set Maya into wireframe mode. After realizing this I was then able to deform the trees on the island making the scene a little more realistic.
There is two lights in the scene one ambient placed above the island and another spotlight placed at the top of the dome shining down in the same way as the sun.

2. Underwater
This scene takes over when the rock is finished skipping and starts sinking to the bottom. It uses the same principle as the other scene in that it takes place in a dome. There is two polygon planes one for the ocean and one for the bottom of the sea. The large rock from the other scene was imported and increased in size to make for a better camera angle There is two lightsin the scene an ambient light placed between the two planes and a spotlight placed shining down onto the water.

In both the underwater and above water scenes three shading groups had to be created. The first was for the sky using pictures of the horizon I decided to use a ramp texture going from a light blue to a darker blue which was applied to the outside dome. The second groups was for the sand which was a light brown color with snow bump map. The third was the ocean which was a water texture mapped to the color and a water texture applied to the bump map. After rendering some scenes the bump map proved too unpredictable so I decided to disconnect it which gave a more peaceful effect which is what I wanted.