[Sasha Smolin]

Thanks for all your comments. Very helpful.

Regarding the CC Glass effect, I didn’t find it that useful, but this then led me to the caustics effect which I think is very cool. It works by having input for three layers – one for the seafloor, one for the waters surface and one for the reflection of the sky.
For the seafloor layer I input the image of my skyline
For the waters surface I input the rods greyscale image
For the sky reflection I left blank as I have not found a suitable image for this yet (but this is potentially very useful)

As this project is essentially a piece of artwork, I am quite happy with the exaggerated distortion . There are also so many settings to play with in the caustics effect that this could be easily reduced if desired.

Regarding the length of the video – I can now image that we will have to reduce the segment to capture everything from sunrise to sunset and a little bit after. This will therefore take the total segment length to something like 16 hours. Then we will have to compile a number of three hour AE segments in premier once they are done.

If anyone has more suggestions please let me know and thanks again.

[Sasha Smolin]

Thanks for the replies. I have played with it a bit more and have got a better result. The next step is to introduce bulges to the gradient map as you have cleverly suggested!

Regarding the 24hr playback – this has not been thoroughly thought through. I have assumed using the right codec/compression-mode will allow for this. I presume you think that the file will be so large that it will not be playable?

The screen will comprise of 60 or so frameless LED screens clamped together. A separate company that specialises in this will do that. All the screens will then be hooked up to a central computer where we can display any video.

Here are my current tests. I added clouds to help with seeing some distortion through the rods.

In this image the rods (ie the gradient map) is not displaced, but an ice normal map texture is – as per Andrew Kramer’s glass tutorial.

In this image the gradient map is displaced. Not a big difference, but still a nice effect.

Please let me know your thoughts.