Big ocean waves

[ben_hamburg]

Hey guys,

I?m doing some R&D for a shot with big ocean waves.
I?m trying out the new waveforce but I?m having trouble getting the look I?m after:



I can get big waves, but I can?t get the detail right. If I use low values (Level3), i get the kind of waves i?m looking for (10m high), but I lose all the fine detail:



And if I increase the detail, I get to many small spikey waves (Level 10):


So how can I get something closer to the reference image?

Another question would be: Is there a way to increase the distance of the waves?

Is there a way to reduce the displacement strength without influencing the waveforce sim?

And what are the most important parameters to get nice foam patterns all over the place, like in the reference image?

[georgi.zhekov]

Hey,

In order to get good looking waves you will need a bit higher grid resolution - so make sure to bump that up. So you can go with Level of 3 and increase the grid resolution - then for the displacement you can add another more detailed Ocean texture.

You can control the distance of the waves by increasing the Control by Wind speed. Increasing it will produce bigger waves.

As for the Foam - you will have to experiment. Play around with the birth threshold and the Pattern strength and radius.

[ben_hamburg]

hey Georgi,

Thanks for the reply...

Ok, so that was kind of what I was thinking of, just to be clear about what you mean:

I use Ocean Tex A with lets say Level 3 to get the general forms of the waves and use that to drive the waveforce. And then I use another Ocean tex B with higher level (around 10 at least) and use that in the rendering displacement slot, with a low multiplier to just add some fine detail.

I?ve also forgotten how the detailing works here. Do I actually need higher grid resolution to get the fine displacement details on the simulated part (not the extended ocean)? I always assumed it works like vraydisplacement, adding detail at render time.

Will this setup also work with the extended ocean? Besides some blending issues of course...

The control by wind speed doen?t seem to work for me, I?ve gad weird results (rising liquid, mesh disappearing in viewport), I?ll have to do some more tests to see if its a bug or if I?m just missing something.

[ben_hamburg]

One more question on the foam simulation...
I?ve added an animated plainforce to get realistic wind. In the first version I set it to only influence the mist, but then the foam/splashes looked unrealistic, since they weren?t influenced by the wind at all.
So No I?ve started another sim with the plainforce influencing not only mits, but also splashes and foam.
And previewing it it looks like now there are now patterns at all forming in the foam.

So now I?m wondering which way to go:

Should I just go back and have only the mist be affected by the plain force and add simply add another plainforce with a much lower strength to only affect splashes and foam?

Or do I just need to increase some other parameters like the surface lock of the foam, so it doesn?t all get blown away by the plain force immediately?

[georgi.zhekov]

Yes, add the low detail Ocean texture for the Waveforce and the detailed one for the Displacement. The displacement texture is applied at render time and it will affect the whole ocean surface.

As for the Plain Force - if you like how it looks on the Mist, you can make a second one but a bit weaker for the Foam and Splashes so it won't make them go all over the place.

[flipbook]

I read this thread yesterday and wanted to give the suggestions a go! Was a quick setup and just left to sim for a few hours. It is based off doing similar to what you are doing, lower detailed displace to power the movement and another displacement adding some detail to the grid.

https://vimeo.com/244996128

I have a teapot set as an Active Body to see what happens... it does simulate but it hasn't rendered correctly.

Be cool to see what you come up with!

[ben_hamburg]

Alright, making progress, increased the falling speed of the foam and now it looks much more natural, I?m gonna have to do another tet to check about the plain force, maybe it was just the fallings peed that made it look so chaotic and not the plain force...

[ben_hamburg]

Georgi. Alright,I?ll give your suggestions a try. Seems like the culprit was really just the falling speed and not the plain force affecting the foam, the plain force was actually still way too low...

@Flipbook: Nice! Looks pretty decent already! I?ll hopefully be able to post some progress, haven?t had a final sim yet, since I?m doing so many iterations to get the dynamics right....

[ben_hamburg]

Hm, now I?m having trouble seeing any results from the plainforce...not sure if its not working or maybe just not visible in hardwarepreview due to the automatic reduction...

[ben_hamburg]

Did another preview with detail reduction disabled and now its cleary visible that the plain force isn?t doing anything...I?m playing around with the splash air drag and mist air drag values now and see where that gets me. Plain force is at 30m/s right now....

[flipbook]

I shall give it a test on my setup in a few hours.. got some work to do before then

[ben_hamburg]

Thanks, let me know if it works for you! I?m off til tomorrow...

[flipbook]

I've been trying to use plain force on mist particles but crashes/hangs the scene. I've created another thread for that. (I am using nightly builds by the way) Hopefully can try it out soon

[nikola.bozhinov]

Hello,

As I've responded in the other thread that flipbook has started the bug is now resolved and there should be no hanging in tomorrow's nightly build (November 30).

[ben_hamburg]

Oh, ok, that might explaine why the simulation sometimes stopped. It only stopped sometimes so I didn?t register it as a bug. Maybe that fixes the force seemingly having no effect. I also read about the increased drag in the plainforce in another thread, so I?ll give that a try aswell. A bit counterintuitive for me, since with standard max forces, drag always means a slow down of particles...