not fully smooth water base surface

[Micha]

You background looks much better now. Are you using GPU rendering? Did you change the GPU texture mode?

Without the displacement the water doesn't looks so real like before.

[Armada01]

yes, the issue with the background is solved. As mentioned, the problem was with the resizing of the texture in GPU rendering. I set it to "on demand mipmapping" under render parameters / GPU textures.

Now I still need to get the sea to look convincing...

[Armada01]

FYI, the ball in the image above is 1meter diameter. Just so you can have a sense of scale...

[Armada01]

Is going up in texture size to 4096 x 4096 pixels, (and then blurring) a possibility? At which point do texture sizes become outrageous? (especially if used for displacement)

[Micha]

I'm not sure about the size, it's a question of your GPU memory and the memory usage of your model. I think most important to avoid height steps and 8bit are 255 steps only. And reflections easy show small errors. If you like you could post the original map here and I take a look on it. I could try to upsize it per AI Gigapixel.

[Armada01]

Ok thanks! AI Gigapixel... what the heck, I always thought that kind of endless zooming technology the CIA uses to better the images of suspects in Hollywood blockbusters to be some sort of mumbojumbo, but this one isn't far off!

I've converted it to .tiff for my use in the file, but can't upload that format here, so this is the original jpeg. I didn't alter the image itself anyways.

[Micha]

I converted the image to 16bit png, 6x upscaled it (denoised, deblured too) and fixed some problems at the seams. I hope the denoise process removed the 8bit steps. I'm curious how it will look now.

http://www.simulacrum.de/temp/image_51851-upscaled.png

[Armada01]

Thanks for that, Micha,

I've made a new render, with the converted texture for both the bump and displacement, but it still gives a bumpy surface, smaller bumps, yes, but still bumps. It's crazy how much definition you need to get a smooth surface.

I'm going to try and convert the bump to a normal map and see if that helps...

[Armada01]

Can normal maps even be used for displacement? I suppose only grayscale since it's just up/down movement (?), which in case, still leaves me with bumps on the displaced part of the waves. :/

Here's the result with 16 bit png for displacement, and a normal map made from that same image for the bump. Result is less than satisfactory.

The displacement's bumps make it look like a peanut shell, and the .png converted to normal map (in PS) has it loose lots of its features (even though I maximized detail and no blurring).

I don't know anymore how to go further on this... Is there any other texture map type I could convert to for the displacement map? Or just greyscale? (in which case I think I have reached the limit, if 16 bit 3000px images don't suffice to get a smooth displacemen...)

[Armada01]

So I've Gaussian blurred the 16 bit png 5 pixels and that gives good results. Bumps are gone!

[Micha]

That's a pity, that the fine details can't be kept. I hope Peter.Chaushev has an idea. A procedural shader could be great.

[Armada01]

I've just started a new topic on the matter of adding smaller wavelets. I also run into a problem there.

The topic is at:
https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...-base-material

[Micha]

An other idea - the filter blur isn't right working and maybe the textures could better work and adjusted, if it works.

Screenshot - concrete texture at blur 20 should be very blurry.

[Micha]

Armada01 I found a procedural water texture. Only it looks quite rounded, no like the sharp water pattern of your texture. But maybe it helps for your project.

[Armada01]

It could work for the 1 Beaufort waves, for sure. Can you post it here?

The one I'm trying to achieve right now is 2-3 Beaufort and for that you'd need waves that are becoming more pyramid-shaped.

The one I'm using (the one you scaled) is maybe even too peaky, meaning the crests are so pointy and they seem like creases in some areas. I hope that by adding smaller wavelets this will become less obvious. But at the lack of a better texture, this one will do.

It still is a strange thing, that even though the earth is covered by sea for 2/3rds there's no simple pack of bump maps out there in 2019 that make a good job of rendering real waves.