All credit to the designer for this work of art.
Here's a link to the page on his site where you can see more of this beauty.
http://www.luizdebasto.com/boats/YD/canados90.htm
There's also a link at the bottom of the page for a rotational view animation.
I have been working on computer visualisation techniques for a long long time and I have to take my hat off to whoever created the 3D compositions of the boat planing - they have really captured the lighting very well. I think they have used a technique called HDRI that illuminates the computer model from the dynamic range of the colours within an image (such as a background).
When used with a detailed model this can produce very high levels of realism - something that my clients are requesting more often so that images of their design can be used in promotional media prior to the boat being built.
If I was to be ultra critical (which many artists are) the surf in one the images is a little too blurred whereas the boat itself is in sharp focus. This would probably only be noticed by someone who was analysing the image for a purpose. You can get away with this in a video, but a still shot needs a very high level of attention to detail.
Great art is never finished, it is only abanded at some point, so I don't want to be too critical as I would be pleased to present them to any of my clients. I will post some of my work soon, and anyone who's interested can level some critique my way.
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Colin CJ Johnson