How best to light an ocean scene?

[mr_pablo]

I am trying to get some basic lighting going for my ocean scene, with a single VRay Sun, and Sky texture for the environment. But it looks terrible.

I am using the Phoenix Ocean Texture in the render slot for the simulation, and have the settings about right, but it's way too reflective and just looks flat and boring (the water itself is actually fairly calm, as its to be in a river port)

Ideally I need to produce an overcast look to the lighting.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

Could you share an image of how it looks right now? We have some materials set up in the Ocean preset, but it would be better if we know what the issue looks like..

Cheers!

[joconnell]

Water is boring unless it's got something interesting to reflect, especially if it's quite flat. Normally with sun sky, I put the sky map into a domelight so that I can have a light select pass for the sun and the sky separately, then in the domelight you can turn it off for reflections. You can then have a second domelight with a hdri or other image in it with diffuse and specular turned off but reflections on. The last thing I do is not always rely on the standard fresnel tick box. Often I'll use a falloff map instead and play with the curves so I get as much difference between the crest and the flat part of the waves / ripples.

[Ivaylo Katev]

you need something to lit the shadows, GI or ambient light.
for outdoor scenes i recommend ambient light

[mr_pablo]

Here is a render. Single VRay Sun, no GI

http://imgur.com/a/4dZ1P

(Please ignore the grey object, its a placeholder for the port)

Very low res sim test, 440K particles.

Whats also odd is the "dip" in the water on the right side, perpendicular to the side of the port. Is that a grid resolution issue?

How can I go about improving the ocean texture? The parameters are close to real life, but I'd lke to try and tint the colour, the river its based on is very "green" in real life ha.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

The dip looks like an ocean level issue - not sure if we didn't already discuss this, but you might want to wait for a a second or two for the liquid to settle and then if there is still a visible difference in the levels, you can correct it from the Rendering panel -> Ocean Level.