OK enough is enough

Right I think I have learnt as much as I can, my head hurts from all the learning. Basically gave myself a crash course of Maya, and I've accomplished quite a bit in a week, ALL modelled in Maya, everything in Maya. Its taken longer only because Maya kept crashing, I mean I'm seeing at least one crash an hour, which is extremely annoying if you dont save in time. Anyway here is a still of the scene. I've noticed a lot of others have done it at night, so I took on the challenge of light which turned out really easy with Mental Ray. Anyway back to the still:

So the particle breakdown goes like this, the clouds are a 3d container which I created three of just to give it a more dimensional feel. The flag obvioulsy a nCloth, really simple very easy, I like how I got the tattered effects to flap in the wind too though really happy with that. The fire could be better but I've run out of time and it does flicker. The ocean is basically a steady ocean with slight foam, didn't want to much. Which leads me to my waves on the shore, very simple design but that is a particle system being emitted from a curve with a gravity and radial field applied. There is also an Ik chain in the Palm tree so I can get the wind to blow it too. The models are made mostly from a NURBS Circle and then lofted, the awkward one was the fishing line, had to figure out how to make rope, used a paint brush effect and coverted it to a poly. I can't even begin to describe how much I've learnt.

I started this Tuesday, and I've mostly just spent the time understanding the dynamics and learning it, that to me is soooo much more important, and its obvious too, the fire was the first thing to be created (followed a step by step tutorial) and its not great but the clouds sea and waves were to follow, and the waves maybe simple but I dont think anyone realises how hard it was, especially as I could only create it once I had the knowlegde of Maya, as there is NO TUTORIAL TO COPY. This is why I'm so happy with what I've created, I did it without copying a tutorial, I did it myself, figured it out for myself, no cheating.