For one of my graphics assignments I had to use make use of shaders So I looked up fragment and vertex shaders and managed to complete this scene in 5 days. A vertex shader is used to adjust the vertex heights for the ocean. A fragment shader was also used for the texturing, sparkle ad gradient effects and I made a simple overlay shader the attempts to make the scene look more vintage.
For my second graphics assignment I had to make use of procedural generation techniques to create a scene. I decided that it would base mine around a volcanic Island , complete with water simulation and a particle generator.
The generator I created can produced some quite nice scenes. It could probably be useful in creating a Caribbean type environment populated with islands.
The smoke particles that are generated also get effected by the environment wind and the height of that particle. This provides a nice scattering effect for the smoke as it rises.