The Special One

his one was inspired by a reference photo of a macro split underwater/above water shot of water lilies, their stems under the water and small fishes swimming among them. I decided to give such a scene a shot and I took it as a challenge. It's already not easy to make a split scene in Vue, I've never made such a small-scale split scene before (with all the DoF effects), and this time I used a technique I never used before. I would have added more detail, but I didn't have much time...

Subsurface scattering was applied to just about everything in this scene, except the background. All plants, even the stems have SSS enabled, the fishes too, and I used physical water model. My goal was a yellowish, murky look that matches the morning atmosphere.