			Sometimes the shark comes out of the ocean near the ship just for curiosity, or because someone has something to eat, and that is the situation I have used. The first time I saw the Great White over the water, I was impressed by the color of its skin. The skin of great white sharks in the water takes the color of all the ambient light, but when they come into our element, the skin becomes dark and shiny. I wanted to create an image that captures these two situations at the same time, from a camera’s point of view. I tried to study some postures of the shark with some basic sketches, and then I added some particulars to create the final sketches. I drew all the images with Photoshop, with a basic color background to find the right color balance.
	I've always been scared of sharks. This is probably because of the Spielberg movie, but at the same time, I have a great attraction for the big predators. I also think they are one of the most beautiful animals on Earth. They are so elegant and powerful. The Great White is the only kind of shark that actually comes out of the water with all of its body; in fact, the Air Attack is famous. It is a kind of attack that starts from the deep ocean, and when the shark arrives on the surface it has a lot of speed and comes out with a big jump on his quarry. This technique is used to hunt seals and it is known to happen near an island in South Africa; Seal Island. www.airjaws.com/sealisland.asp

	I used four other omni lights, a tree for the underwater ambient light and one for the over water ambient light. I duplicated the sunlight to give the sun effect also to the upper part of the shark. I used Brazil r/s as the render engine, and his GI ambient light. For the skin material, I draw the texture in Photoshop starting from the previously mentioned book illustration, adding some details from photos and some from paintings. In the end, I had six maps (color underwater, color upper water, diffuse, bump, reflection mask and mask).

I used an HDR map for the reflection of the out-of-water skin mixed on the ray-traced material. Afterwards, I applied an Unwrap modifier to give a correct disposition of the map.

Before starting the render, I gave a different Object ID to the scene object to use it afterwards on Combustion.

I rendered it all with Brazil in one single pass, using the RPF output format. It took only two hours for a 3,200 x 2,000 px result.

Then I moved on to Combustion. First of all I made the Ray effect using the RPF file. For the Ray, I used the Dolly Blur on a gray scale image with a lot of contrast (as a new footage-layer). I extracted the ID of the low part of the body, I drew a mask and I applied a gray filter. To give the Ray effect I used the Dolly Blur operator. To give a real effect Image, I used the Z-Buffer operator (to give some Z-deep effect) the glow operator and some particle layers to simulate the plankton and the sea. I gave a final touch with a little color correction.

I studied architecture at the University of Florence. One day I was given a computer ‘and love bloomed’, attracted by the possibility of giving life to everything was in my mind. As a consequence, there was a passage to the three-dimensional world.

After a short period of suffering and much time spent on the computer I got passionate, then I casually began to collaborate with an architectural studio (Studio Lucchi & Biserni www.studiolb.com) and from that moment I understood that my passion could give me also some economical satisfactions.

In the year 2000 we joined our energies and we gave life to TREDISTUDIO © with the intention of integrating various competences in only one structure.

Related links:
Website : www.tredistudio.com
CGPortfolio : tredistudio.cgsociety.org

I modeled the shark with Edit Poly in 3ds Max, starting from a simple box and using a book illustration as a guide for shaping the body. When it was finished I enclosed the teeth, the eyes into the model and I used some bend modifier mixed on a morpher editor to give him the right position.

Before working on the water, I positioned the camera into the scene and then built a plane (the water) with a lot of polygons. I cut it along the camera view edges, to use only the viewed polygon. To make the wave for the water, I used the Paint modifier. I drew around the shark with some different straight lines, and finally I enclosed some bubbles with the BlobMesh modifier, to give some detail to the water. The water material is a Brazil r/s material (Brazil Glass) with 1.333 IOR, with a little green color.

To generate my idea of the image, I have to use different materials for the over-water body of the shark, to the underwater portion. To do that, I used a pretty simple method. I split the model in two parts using the water plane as a cutter. Having done that, I had two parts that I could manage with the material and especially with the light. For the Caustic Effect on the underwater skin, I used a Direct Light (that simulates the sun) with a bitmap Mask and enclosed on it only on the underwater part of the shark.