A Frame of Reference
Looking at the assignments for HIST615–Interactive Maps I find the second assignment offers an option. I’ll do a 3–D Historical Landscape. Since I have some previous experience with the software I’m providing a small portfolio of my work so my assignment can be evaluated in context. The primary applications I use are Bryce5, Rhino3D, and Poser5. I have a beta version of DAZ|Studio which I may use in place of Poser.
The first example does not use real geography but it is modeled after the Pacific Northwest coast.
The original image was modeled in Bryce4 but this version was rendered in Bryce5. I started wanting to do a perspective and atmospherics study but ended up working on a wet sand effect as well. The low fog is hiding bad water. It is difficult to do breakers in Bryce and I haven’t mastered the technique yet. It is still a fairly good image of typical summer day on the Oregon coast.
This next example is closer to what the assignment calls for. The geography in this image comes from the U.S. Geological Service Digital Elevation Maps (DEM) for Bainbridge Island, Washington and the Olympic Mountains. 
The scene is set on the forward end of the passanger deck of a Washington State Ferry on the Seattle to Winslow route. I gave the DEM a forest texture then used a trick from the Bryce2 days to give the trees a 3–D effect. The human figure was again modeled in Poser4 with an early version of posable hair. The ferry deck was modeled in Rhino3D. One place where this image would fail the requirements of the assignment is there is no big ugly creosote plant on the headland at the left side of the picture as there is on the enterance to Eagle Harbor and the town of Winslow.
This lighthouse is also in a made up landsacpe. This was my first use of Bryce5. I wanted to do an image of a lighthouse. Also I’d just purchased Rhino3D and I wanted to see if it was up to making a beehive lens for a lighthouse. 
After completing the lens, the lighthouse and most of the rest of the scene something was missing. The image need a frame of some sort. Since Bryce5 added the ability to model trees and plants I used the trunk and branches of the douglas fir model to frame the image. At this point I realized the vegitation models are not high resolution models. The result is some very angley needles and branches. Putting it in shadow helps a little but it is still not a very realistic tree. There are other problems with the image as well. The sand on the beach has too high an ambient setting (i.e. it glows too much, real sand doesn't glow except for certain places in Nevada). There should also be some sea birds.
Professor Petrik’s Pet Project
Somewhere along the line Professor Petrik ypu let slip that you had contemplated developing a web site with a special type of content. While engaging in some preliminary research for the Great Map Hunt assignment this item which might just the sort of thing she’s looking for. In 1932 adventurer Carl Denham lead an expedition to a remote south sea island. While most of the world became facinated with what he removed from the island, the 8th Wonder of the World, the American Missionary Board was interested in what he left behind. 
When Denham left the most prominent man made feature on the island was a massive stone wall. With the reason for the wall removed and a new religious ferver burning in the natives, thanks to the missionaries, the wall was torn down and the material used to build their new place of worship. Since the missionaries told them this building would be God’s house and the natives were used to somewhat oversized gods the structure they built, the King Congregationalist Church, is quite huge. This is an old image modeled in Bryce3. Once again fog hides bad water.