many simulators - 1 ocean.

[jstrob]

Is it possible to use 1 ocean for many simulators at the same time? For example if we have many boats in an ocean.

I saw someone who talked about trying to use cap mode or matte object http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...mulators+ocean
(would probably better using vraySphereFade) but it doesn't seem to work really good.

Here is a quick test I did with vraySpherefade on a phoenixFD ocean system.

[Ivaylo Katev]

there is no automation for this rendering mode (apparently we have to do it), for now the only way is really cap mode+displaced geometry with slots for each sim.
some people are using one simulator in ocean mode and other simulators in cap mode, and this works good if no closeup view of the cap mode simulators is needed

[wxyz]

Would it be possible to see a tutorial for the cap method?

[Ivaylo Katev]

i have never tried it, it's very probably that until we prepare this tutorial we can have the automated rendering mode, so the efforts will be in vain. actually this is the common technique used with all the other simulators, so you can use any tutorial regardless of the simulator that is used.
in few words - you have to create a plane with rectangular holes for each simulator, put each simulator in the corresponding hole and add vray displacement modifier to the plane, using the same ocean texture that is put in the phoenix displacement slot. this is all, perhaps the seam will be visible and you have to do additional blending in post, as i said never tried this standard technique. i think with phoenix you can use better technique, render one of the simulators in ocean mode, and all the other simulators in cap mode, but in separate pass. so, you have two passes. first with the ocean simulator, and second with all the rest simulators in cap mode. export the alpha of the second pass, and use it as mask in the compositing. if the seam is too visible, add some blur to the mask.

[wxyz]

Thanks for your great post

[ben_hamburg]

just to quickly confirm this: using one simulator in ocean mode and the others in cap mode is the way we did it in the end, even though it took some additional masking work in post to get it to look right in every case. As long as your cameraview doesn´t let you see below the cap mode containers, it works fine, only problem is that the masking doesn´t work quite right when you can see below the cap mode containers, in that case you´ll have to mask out some stuff in post.

Also I´d recommend to make the containers long enough, so the boat wakes don´t fade out to quickly, and also broad enough for the same reason.
i had some cases where the trained eye (like me) could easily spot where the simulated containers were.

[Ivaylo Katev]

thanks for sharing the experience!
i hope we will see the final result when possible

[ben_hamburg]

I´d love to, cause there was a lot of Phoenix involved and I loved working with it, even though there was a lot of head scratching involved...
But unfortunately its all top secret stuff, so its a no-show for now and all I can do is brag about how well we did....