the foam texture needs the ocean texture, it’s a kind of extension. but as you said, you can use the displacement on animated mesh.
something important - the animated mesh must keep the vertices count, otherwise it will be not handled properly.
my suggestion is to not use it at all, only wave force.
But how would you do that with a larger scale? The wave force only makes waves, foam and splash within its calculation boarders? No?
the wave force uses the oceantex map, the force produces interactive waves inside the simulator, but the ocean map can be used to displace geometry, producing large ocean surface with waves similar to these in the simulator area.
I cant seam to be able to produce the same results as seen on the vimeo test here:
I either get no foam mask, or its all over the place, looking like its got another scale on the object or something.
Could you share your setup for that scene seen on vimeo so I can examine it?
of course, this is the scene used to make the video
ocean_foam.zip (20.5 KB)
Not sure if this is the right place to ask.
Using the release version 2.2 if a high wave rolls over the simulated area the foam doesn’t float over the top. Rather it disappearing because it’s been created on a flat ocean and then a Phoenix Ocean tex is only used at render. You therefore get these streaks of waves cancelling out the foam as discussed at the start of the thread.
When using the Nightlies although the foam now adheres to the surface of the ocean displaced by the Phoenix Ocean tex it also generates a lot of foam all over the sim area too.
Is there a way of using displacement to keep the foam on the surface but not generate it? I would like a body moving through the ocean to cause foam and splashes alone.
Not entirely sure what you are trying to explain but I find best practice is to generate foam only from the splash (foam on hit). I don’t like the results (at least in the past I haven’t) of having foam born in general areas.
Have the splash with chaining of 2 and affect liquid of 1 gets a generally good result to start with 
if i understand correctly, the problem is lack of foam displacement. phoenix displaces the foam with the same amount as the surface, keeping it on the top, but this mechanism requires the liquid slot of the foam shader to be set with the corresponding simulator, otherwise the shader does not know that the liquid is displaced.
Sorry, the solution to this is probable really easy, but I cant seam to find it.
After simulating a grid with foam and splashes. Is there a way to rotate the waves generated from ocean displacement texture so that I get the foam generated from the FoamTex in the opposite way?
I cant rotate the PHXSimulator.
Having an additional option within the OceanTex would help. Like a velocity direction or something.
EDIT: Never mind. Trying to work with a fever isn’t probably the best thing, hah. ^^
Hopefully this explains it a bit better.
Above is a sim from the release version. I’d like to get the same foam from the wake but without it getting covered by larger waves from the Ocean tex displacement.
Trying the nightlies, it looks like the foam remains on the surface. The only problem is that I’m getting foam generated on the leading edge of the simulation area, where it meets the rest of the ocean surface.
There is a foam line the length of the simulation box all the way through the animation which you can see in this image.
Finally is there a way to cull any foam particals created bellow the water line?
there is no particle cleaner, but the problem is related to the birth settings.
can you attach the scene, or if is too big just export the simulator preset and attach it here
OK My mistake.
I didn’t realise that you need to set the mode under the Rendering tab to Mesh and only switch back to Ocean for the rendering.
It was the seam in the ocean mesh that was creating this foam.
Thanks for all the pointers.
hm, the rendering mode does not affect the simulation, it must be something else
Well initially that’s what I thought. I’ll double check that later. In the meantime I’ve attached the sim preset file.
Foam_Test_01.zip (1.16 KB)
your settings are looking good, the leading foam birth may be result from some new issue, but our ship testing scene does not show it.
perhaps would be better if we have the entire scene. try to simulate without the ship geometry, if the issue is reproducible, delete the ship (to make the scene smaller) and attach the scene.
i think we already know the reason, other users had similar issue, it’s the “by free fly” option, make it zero
ok, then it may be from another bug, that was fixed friday, can you test with a latest nightly?
OK, should there be a max 2011 VRay 3. version available in Fridays folder, I can only see for VRay 2.4? Or is it OK to use the one from Wednesday which has a vray 3.0 one?