July (Summer)

I began this scene by creating the hills which eventually became the Islands once the water had been added in later on.

Islands - This was done by creating a plane sized 2000 by 2000. I then look a black and white image from photoshop which depicted the high and low areas of the textured landscape. To do this, I click 'Modifiers' and selected the 'Displace' option. Then I chose the image of black and white, and changed the strength up to 200 to increase the results. Then I changed the material texture to a sand type which I had obtained from google. Then changing the tiling to 3 to make the sand more refined.

Water - I created this the same way as I created the lake earlier. I began by making a plane which was exactly the same size as the Island plane. Then I changed the material texture, by selecting 'Flat Mirror' on the 'Reflective' section of the image map drop down box. I then made it more ripply by changing the 'Bump' map to 'Noise' which made it more realistic. Finally, I brought the plane up so the level of water on the Islands looked higher.

Trees - I then began placing trees on the map by selecting the palm tree from the Geometry>AEC Extended>Palm Trees. Then I placed them in interesting position by adjusting the rotation and scale of each of the trees. Then I added a few smaller shrubs for a more realistic look.

Sky - This was created in the same way as previously. This was by creating the whole image inside a dome, which then had a material applied to the inside of it. The enviroment colour was initially set to a pale blue colour, so now all I needed to add was the clouds and texture. To do this, I made a material which was completely white, but in the 'Opacity' field on the maps drop down menu, I chose 'Noise' meaning the sky would only show parts of the background colour through it. I then changed the noise style to Turbulence to make it more patchy. Then I altered the other options like tiling and noise threshold to give the best results. Finally, to add the fading background to the sky, I duplicated the dome, and made it slightly larger. Then I changed the material to a new one, on which I changed the 'Opacity' map to 'Gradient' so the white parts of the sky will be stronger in the distance, like in the real sky.