A believable ocean

[stevesideas]

I'm currently working on a project where I need to create an ocean and ocean shader. I purchased the dreamscape plugin some time ago for another project and came up with some fairly good results but there were issues like tiling (when viewing the ocean along its plane). I also have tiling issues with procedural noise. I've tried mixing noise and rotating and scaling at different sizes etc but to be honest the noise in max doesn't seem to really do a great job. I've seen a lot of images online about using displacement but for large oceans that go into the distance I don't think this would be a viable solution. I'd love to know how they create real cgi oceans in film. It's bugged me for a long time so any tips or advice or simple pointers would really be appreciated. Would maya be a better solution instead of max or maybe even blender ?

I really want to up the quality of my renders overall and this is one area I'm trying to get better at. I'm guessing there are some specialised plugins or processes that are not necessarily commercial so I might just have to do with what I have.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

I'm currently working on a project where I need to create an ocean and ocean shader. I purchased the dreamscape plugin some time ago for another project and came up with some fairly good results but there were issues like tiling (when viewing the ocean along its plane). I also have tiling issues with procedural noise. I've tried mixing noise and rotating and scaling at different sizes etc but to be honest the noise in max doesn't seem to really do a great job. I've seen a lot of images online about using displacement but for large oceans that go into the distance I don't think this would be a viable solution. I'd love to know how they create real cgi oceans in film. It's bugged me for a long time so any tips or advice or simple pointers would really be appreciated. Would maya be a better solution instead of max or maybe even blender ?

I really want to up the quality of my renders overall and this is one area I'm trying to get better at. I'm guessing there are some specialised plugins or processes that are not necessarily commercial so I might just have to do with what I have.

Phoenix FD ocean mod?

[stevesideas]

I thought you were joking but it seems this is a reality. Is this actually out yet or soon to be ?

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Its out, I think u might need to ask for Nightly access but its out and u can abuse it

[joconnell]

If you install the phoenix demo you get their ocean map which ain't bad as a displacement source, or this yoke - http://www.guillaumeplourde.com/ - tough thing as usual is the foam if you need it.

[stevesideas]

I already have Phoenix FD 2 but not used it in quite a while hence the reason I wasn't aware of this. I've sent a message. Cheers guys

[stevesideas]

The ocean feature is fantastic but now I get a lot of noise toward the horizon.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Depending on the method you are using there were some options to edit ocean I believe. Like LOD so further away it gets simpler there fore easier for AA to deal with.

[stevesideas]

There are subd options for skyline but it doesn't help...it just makes the overall quality suffer. I've tried adjusting the smoothing option but can't see what that does at all. Unless there is another option I'm missing I can't see how to resolve this.

Edit: In fact increasing the subdivs doesn't really get rid of the noise it just looks a bit better. Ideally I would like to have something to smooth out the surface and alter the mesh density near the horizon. Something like you get in dreamscape when using adaptive mesh.

[stevesideas]

The only way to sort the noise toward the horizon is to increase the Skyline Subdiv. But this significantly increases render time. I'm not sure there are any LOD options. I can't find any anyway...

[joconnell]

I woonder could you use a gradient or a falloff using towards / away to gradually mask off the phoenix map to the distance?