Large Scenes Question
 

Is there a trick to making a large scene that is not really large?

For example....lets say i had a scene with a ocean, clouds generated in a 3d box, and a high poly boat zipping around....and i want to in my video fly in on it with the camera and kind of circle around the boat.

Well you want the clouds and ocean to keep going on...not being cut off....so would i make a really huge ocean and sky? Or is there a camera scaling trick or LOD on the ocean and clouds....because I'de imagine having so much ocean and clouds would really tax your computer

having worked very briefly in that area, what i have learnt from my instructors is there is 2 ways to approach it, the first is trick is the camera, keeping it focused within the boundaries of the entire scene, so no matter how far you zoom out or in, the lens will be focused to a specific scale encomposing the entire scene making it as if its actually quite large.

the other is image planes, making clouds look far away is simple even if your scene is on a smaller scale, the clouds can be infinite. the same prinicple can be applied to an ocean but i wouldn't know how to get the same effect in the background as in the foreground, or if its just ocean you could render an single frame of the waves and make that image plane, so in the distance its still an image but because the foreground element is ocean disturbance you could try to get it both to sync together.

like i said, i've worked very briefy in this area so i'm not entirely sure, just theorising :P