Name: Yuriy Kozlov
id: ykozlov

License:
	Copyright (C) 2007 Yuriy Kozlov
	This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.
	To view a copy of this license, visit http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
		
Methods:
	Character:
		The character is inspired by the toys given out by the Brandeis
		Department of Residence Life during room selection.  It is a
		construction hat with legs.
		I started with a sphere.  I took all the vertices in the bottom
		half and set their position to 0 to get a flat bottom.  I cut it
		in half and used a mirror modifier until I was done creating the
		mesh.  I created a cylinder for the legs and extruded it several
		times.  I cut out a circle in the sphere where the leg meets it
		and merged the vertices so that the leg is connected.  I extruded
		the leg further resizinng as I went to make the foot.  The details
		in the hat and the feet were made by selecting faces, subdividing
		if needed, and extruding them.  A subsurface modifier was used to
		make the model smooth.  The materials are simple colors adjusted
		for specularity.  There are three materials, one for the head, one
		for legs, and one for the feet.
	Rigging:
		 The armature consists of a bone for the head, a master bone, and
		a dozen bones for each leg.  The legs are made to be flexible like
		the toy.
	Bench:
		The bench was made from a cube elongated and duplicated 3 times.
		The boards have a wood texture on them.  The legs of the bench
		are made from a bezier curve extruded and beveled.  They have
		a cloud texture applied to normals and color to get the metallic
		effect.
	Beach:
		The beach, which is under the entire landscape, is a plane subdivided
		and formed to the slope of a beach.  It has three stucci textures
		on it to create the sand grains and bigger bumps.
	Water:
		The water was initially copied from the beach shape, and faces
		were added to create the top.  The material is a dark blue, with
		ray mirror and transparency.  There is a cloud texture applied to
		the water to get waves.  In addition, there is an extra plane
		right under the water with the same material.  Both are somewhat
		transparent, and the mixing of the materials adds to the water
		effect.
	Grass:
		The grass is made using particles by this tutorial:
		http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=68269
	Clouds:
		Clouds were made using particles and halos with the help of this
		tutorial: http://www.cogfilms.com/CQTs-5.html
		They were made thin and long unlike the puffy clouds in the tutorial.
		Also, static particles were used rather than going to a particular
		frame to get it to look right.
	Sun:
		The sun is a sphere with a bright material with shaders on it.  There
		is a sun lamp in front of it to provide the actual light.  There are
		different color spot lights around the sun to add extra color to the
		sun, the clouds, and the water.
	Lighting:
		There are 5 lamps in this scene, most of them used to color the sun
		and clouds.  One lamp provides a little extra light on the characters.
	Sign:
		The no tresspassing sign was made with a simple bezier curve, extruded
		and beveled and a plane.  The post has the metal texture from the bench
		on it and the sign has an image texture made using Krita, and a clouds
		texture to make it look old.  This sign was added solely to fulfill
		the requirement of the assignment to include image textures.
	Sky:
		The world uses "real" and "blend" to get a gradient sky.  Stars are 
		enabled.  There is a clouds texture with an orange color mapped to
		hori and blend to make some extra pink/orange in the sky and make it
		non-uniform.  There is also a reddish ambient light.
		
Credits:
	None.  All the models and materials in this project are original work by Yuriy Kozlov.
	
Bibliography:
	Grass tutorial:
	http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=68269
	Introduction to character animation:
	http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Character_Animation
		used as a reference for rigging.
	Clouds tutorial:
	http://www.cogfilms.com/CQTs-5.html
		
Problems:
	I wanted to make actual water using fluid simulation, but it wouldn't work.
	However, the texture method looks excellent, so this isn't really a problem.
	The edge where the water meets the beach needs some work though, and having
	the fluid simulation take care of it for me would have been nice.

	Adding an image texture to the scene was a problem because the scene was
	complete without one.  The assignment asked for two, but I really felt that
	adding image textures would not add to the scene.  Also, the water is
	transparent with refraction, but this is very subtle.

	The sun and sky were very difficult to get right.  It took a while and a lot
	of playing around, but it's pretty close to what I intended.

	The sand isn't quite as granular as I would like.  I was thinking of making
	it with particles rather than with textures, for more realism and to possibly
	add some sort of sand going up in the air effect when I get to the animation,
	but that would take tremendous resources.  The large number of particles used
	for the grass already slows blender down.