Ryukyo: Sea Dragon City, Kaidan

[Gamerprinter]

Finally finished my undersea map to the Sea Dragon's palace and another city for Kaidan, located just north Ryuki island in the Naga Strait between the islands of Yonshu and Ryuki.

Link to WIP forum thread: http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=6905

I used Xara Xtreme Pro 4.0 to create most of the terrain and the depth effect using stacked layers of transparent blue (70 - 96% transparency applied.) The brown "lichen" like coral is a stack of bevels with drop shadows. The entire map was composited in Xara as well.

The plants and coral forms were generated in either PD Particles or Zbrush 1.13, while the Palace Gateway, most of the structures, some of the coral and plants, the ship are all 3D modeled in Nendo and rendered in Raydream.

An experiment on different techniques to achieve the depth effect was the original goal, as well as having another exotic location for Kaidan.

Enjoy!

GP

PS: SG noticed a weird anamolous discrepancy in the water surface just right of the ship in the top corner of my last post in the WIP forum, found it, applied a linear transparency and made it disappear.

[Steel General]

I was hoping it wasn't just my eyes playing tricks on me

Great Job GP!

[Coyotemax]

Wow that is amazing (i think i may have said that at some point in the WIP thread..)

When i first saw the pieces posted in the WIP thread, I was thinking either that's some dang huge coral or this is gonna be a very close-in map. But you made it totally work (are we surprised?). Very balanced, I love the spirals, and the grouper-head shaped village (lol).

And the board even let me rep you for it! (i so lose track of who i've repped when and how many times since, heh)

[zelig]

Amazing work and a really unique piece.