The fish are completely done in 3d, therefore they can rotate, everything else that you see is not, only the parts you are seeing are. For instance take an apple and cut it in half vertically. Now squat down exactly at eye level and look at the uncut side. There is nothing there to tell you that the other half of that apple on the back isn't there, but it isn't. :)

You cannot and will not be able to rotate the tank. I don't think people really want Jim to spend the next 5 years working on corals just so you can rotate the tank to the exclusion of everything else? ;) :)

Welcome to the forum Tom.

[quote=Jav400;113159]
You cannot and will not be able to rotate the tank. I don't think people really want Jim to spend the next 5 years working on corals just so you can rotate the tank to the exclusion of everything else? ;) :)

Amen to that!

Only 5 years?? ...... Mmm.... I was thinking more like 50 for that class of miracle..... :)

OK. It sounds like the easiest method to emulate 360 deg. rotation would be to match the graphic objects at each end of the tank so seamless panning in one direction is possible. Probably not worth the effort. Thanks for the replies. Great program.

The thing that makes the fish fairly easy to display in full-3D is the fact that saltwater fish are so thin (almost 2-dimensional). That's why I chose a marine tank as my subject. The jagged, irregular outlines of the fish only really show up from the left or right sides. Try rotating an irregular piece of coral, and the smooth polygon-based nature of the object quickly becomes apparent. Again, I'm not going to talk about the secret way around this except to say that it's incredibly time consuming.

If you have an excellent graphics card and PC, you might be able to get 1 frame per second with true 3D on this complex scene. Or, in 10 years, you might be able to buy (at reasonably-affordable prices) hardware that would do reasonable frame rates.

I think bump-mapping would help a lot...

Uuuuummmmm, sound like a task for Einstein,
I must not be too hard to please because I just love it as is. I am watching it for my pleasure and not to scruntinized it, I leave that to Cliff. He is really good at it.

Please don't.:sad:

Assuming - from a theoretical perspective that it were possible to rotate the aquarium, think of the complexity of the simultaneous rotation and motion changes of the fish swimming in the aquarium which already have complex movements.

Possibly the best practical solution would be perhaps be a few alternate fixed views of the aquarium background, but even this presents myriad technical issues such as photographing a real model of the aquarium without the fish but containing the other fixed objects for processing - lots of work for the small return I should think.

As it is, I think the saltwater aquarium with 30 fish is an incredible accomplishment in 3D. To get anything more realistic would require video rather than 3D and the file sizes would be huge and could not have nearly the versatility which is offered with the present model.

Best regards,

Lin

Sorry, been traveling so late to this party, but just realize that the corals were photographed, modeled, and built from one side. To rotate the camera more than about 15 degrees would reveal this as everything would "fly apart".