Hi everyone.
This is my first upload 
It´s a test of an ocean surface. Still some weirdness, but maybe not too bad (the buoy is dummy, just to have something dance on the waves):
…and also a little animation (you have to be a little patient, the upload is quite slow):
http://deepartmend.dyndns.tv/exchange/sea\_motion/sea\_motion.html
Best regards.
Sascha
Looks nice. did you use plugin to create water?
Looks really good - it’s definitely possible to make this without plugins although it’s a bit more awkward to get things like wakes / reaction to objects.
No, it´s done by VRay-displacement with a noise-mix-map - based on the ocean-material by Pietro Canin (Vray-materials.de) - I modified the texture somewhat and added animation. Additionally a wave-spacewarp provides bigger waves.
I do the same thing - a high poly plane with a large noise / wave space warp to make the big rolling waves, vray displacement with a noise map for the crested parts, and a noise bump for the small detail.
One problem i often have with refracted/displaced surfaces is it takes for ever to render. Do you have that problem too?
To be honest I don’t bother with a lot of refraction in my sea scapes - a lot of the time they’re lit by the reflections as much as anything else - normally a minute a frame or less. Of course if you want to do a waterline that has nice sea through green water nearer the shore then you’ve got to start using fog which is a tiny bit more expensive. You can cheat for the peaks / colour changes using falloff maps or with colour changes on the maps driving the water displacement too.