Create (infinite) Ocean with Phoenix FD for maya

[CGPrime]

Hi,
I am working on a project and need a realistic (infinite) ocean with a ship simulation + foam and splashes. My plan was to create it with phoenix FD for maya. The great tutorial with the ship scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh_XWg3QcwI) is max only and no example scene with a ship is available for maya

I am using the latest nightly build for Phoenix FD maya 2014 x64, 2.2.0 rev 26018 and the latest stable VRay for maya x64 2014.

It would be nice if there would be a more or less detailed description especially with the gridsize etc.

I tried this but I can't create an infinite ocean like in the max ship tutorial:

A very short description how to setup ocean scene:
1. create a simulator (be sure that it has proper physical size, check your scene units!)
2. open the liquid panel and enable the liquids
3. enable the initial fill up (by default is set to fill at level 50%)
4. open the rendering panel and enable the ocean option
-------Checkpoint: If you press simulate, and render the result afterwards, you will obtain a flat infinite surface
5. in the render panel there is an option displacement, enable it
6. put a PhoenixFDOceanTex in the displacement map
-------Checkpoint: You should have infinite ocean with waves, adjust the texture to have good locking waves. If your physical scale is correct, the best way is to use the wind option to control the waves
7. Create the interacting geometry
8. from the liquid panel, enable the foam simulation and set the birth rate to 0, b2b interaction to 200, foam pattern to 1. The patterns are important for the good locking sea foam
9 enable the splash simulation and set the foam on hit option to 1. This is the best way for good locking sea foam, the direct foam birth is better for pouring beer or soap foam
10 simulate, see the result, simulate again...
once the liquid is good simulated (with exported velocity), you can use particle resimulation to adjust the foam and splash, it is faster.
11 create two PHXFoam objects
12 select the foam group in the first one, and the splash group in the second one
13 adjust the rendering. in mu opinion the sea foam is best rendered with point shader, the splash may be rendered with point shader or with splash shader but with high subdivs on the image sampler

I would be very grateful for any help.... in the meantime I will perform new tests to find a solution.

[Ivaylo Katev]

can you explain a bit more, what point exactly you failed to reproduce? is the simulation the problem, or the rendering of the ocean?

[CGPrime]

Sorry for the late response. I updated to the revision 26054 and followed your steps but I have some problems with my sim.

The first one is I got a nasty border between the container and the infinite ocean. The initial fill was 50 as well as the the ocean surface level (original). I tried to solve this by increasing the ocean surface level from 50 to 52. But that's no solution because if I use the phoenix fd ocean texture with displacement the gab is still visible. Please have a look at the attached image.... btw. is it normal that the ship is filled with water (extra simulation effort?)?

The second one is to get the foam and the splashes rendered.

11 create two PHXFoam objects
12 select the foam group in the first one, and the splash group in the second one
13 adjust the rendering. in mu opinion the sea foam is best rendered with point shader, the splash may be rendered with point shader or with splash shader but with high subdivs on the image sampler

I created the two objects and connected them to the PhoenixFDPGroups (btw. I needed to turn off "show only DAG objects"... that took a while to figure it out) but if I hit the renderbutton the render won't start because of "phoenix fd foam - collecting particles".... I switched to a frame with fewer particles and then it starts to render but nothing is visible. Am I right that I need to set the mode from one PHXFoam objects to points and the other to splashes? What was my mistake?

The third thing is what can I do to get the foam on the infinite ocean?

Thank you for your effort!

[Ivaylo Katev]

seeing your image value 52 is ok, the flat appearance of the grid is most probably caused by the displacement fade out. this is an option to suppress the displacement above certain height, because you don't need the natural formations in the simulator to be displaced (waves, natural splash, the bow wake). the default value is 20% above the water level, if i'm not wrong. something went wrong here, i can't say what, but you can try to workaround this changing this value.

about the foam - you should have info for the foam particle count, can you say the value where the "collect particles" phase fails? and can you share the foam shader settings? usually the particle collection is fast, for example 50M particles are collected in less than 30 sec.
very probably there is a problem, most probably a NaN value, this would explain the slow collection and the lack of rendering.

about the water inside the ship - it's strongly recommended closed geometry to be used. we are trying to ensure adequate behavior even with open geometry, but at least the simulation will be slower because the extra particles. and this is the most harmless possibility, in the worse case you can expect problems disturbing your work.

about the foam on the infinite ocean. we have a tool for this (see the attached images), but it is just implemented and is still max only. hopefully in a month it will be transferred in maya as well.

[CGPrime]

Big thanks Ivaylo for your quick reply. I tried some values and closed the ship but there are still some issues. At the start of the animation there is no border at the container (only the less displacement at the end of the ship) but after a few frames the border starts to appear. I created a few new containers but still the same result (maybe the settings stay the same). I don't know what to do... Maybe it helps when you can have a look at my scene. I have 10 days to get a good result for 2 stills with splashes and foam etc. and 30 days for an 10 sec. animation like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1h-nQkY9r0

About the new tool... very nice but I dont think it will be available in time for my animation. I think the ship tutorial for maya tutorial or the ship scene for maya would help many people as well.
But right now I need every help I can get. So I hope you can have a look at my scene. Big thx in advance!


water_wave_sim_v12.zip

[Ivaylo Katev]

in such animations the first frames are always cut off, the foam is not developed, the waves are not developed, the water level may have some oscillations until stable state.
the animation that we use as example starts from frame 250. so, you must adjust the ocean level not using the start frame, you must skip certain amount of frames.
did you try to tweak the fade out parameter? i think it is the key for the lowered displacement in the end part of the sim.