I assume that running a STL-check is a way of knowing that a model i ok for simulation?
I got some models of ship hulls made in Rhino and on import to max the different surfaces constructing the boat are all separate elements.
I can weld them together but since the way Rhino works the vertext placement does not alig and I get alot of open faces.
So do I have to remodel the hulls or will Phoenix do a proper sim as long as the edges are tight?
1. There seems to be more details in the waves within the sim grid than outside in the infinite ocean.
2. The right edge of the image is not so cool with activated Motion blur.
Any good tips on how to fix this?
Also what you see is what I’m planning to have in the scene. Do you have any good tips on render settings?
/Carl
from what I know so far, Phoenix works much better with closed objects for simulation.
Waaazoo: cool. Ill rebuild the mesh. it’s a quick job. But good to know the day I have a more complex model.
The subdivision didn’t effect the “resolution” of the waves outside of the grid. and no matter how close I ge to the “sweetspot” on the ocean rendering level I can’t get rid of the seem.
Looking again at your renders, it seems your outside sea is blurred but not what is inside of the grid. Are all channels exported for the sim?
The one with the boats doesn’t have MB. The other one does but it only seems to blur the ocean and not the water surface within the simulation. I’ll have to upres and make a cleaner render to be sure. Yes velocity chanel is exported
Ah, this is a known issue. The reason is that the ocean is generated only in the view of the camera and adding MB would mix it with the outside areas where there is no ocean. I will at least add an option to create the ocean a bit outside the camera view, so it can be controlled manually, and later when we get to reworking some of the camera stuff for the ocean, I hope it can happen automatically. Will keep you posted…
Svetlin: Yea I figured as much. No big issue. I’ll compensate the render and since I don’t match existing footage it’s no problem. But if I had to comp against cameratracked I guess it would be great to have this fixed.
What about the difference in detail of the water surface?
On my old machine 12 Gig Ram I can render small images of my scene. But when rendering full HD, the PC grinds to a halt and I have to hardware reboot to access the system. Is there a way to estimate the memory consumption? I think it has to do with the amount of particles and motion blur. Also. in scenes like these there is no real point in having GI right?
This is more of a hobby for me these days and so I don’t have everything top of mind as when I worked with this full time and had workmates to bug 
You are very correct in your observation. I used the Ocean sim setup from the menu and the velocity is not checked for the grid. Only the particle velocity is active. Thanks :
It’s clearly “building of the Embree motion blur” stage of the render that eats RAM. Any trick to handle that when on a low RAM machine?
Lowering the Ocean Subdivs is the only major thing you can do to help the RAM usage, apart from lowering the image resolution. How much RAM do you have?
currently 12. But pc’s comes cheap and I can get a Dell Precision 3620 with 64 for a very affordable price. It’s not the latest but will surely do the job. And I’ll get a render boost since I need CPU for the ocean… 
There is plenty of Motion blur going on so I guess I could lower it quite a bit. OMG! what’s de default value? 2? Mine was at 100. At 2 the render is alot less noicy. I hardly use any RAM. (but rendertime was increased by 40%)
I get big blobs of water forming on at the back of the far boat. Is that the “particle behave as water”? What would be a good approach to get rid of that?
Oh, 12 is really low. You need 32 for a good res ocean.
Can’t say about the blobs though, looks like it could be the ‘liquid-like’ option. Can you screenshot your Grid, Dynamics, Foam and Splash settings?
Yup, try with less of ‘liquid-like’ and ‘affect liquid’ regarding the blobs.
The band though is a mystery. Can you try with Monday’s nightly tomorrow - I did some major changes to the way the ocean is built and unless everything is broken, then it might have improved If it’s still there, bump me and we’ll have to try some things out to locate the problem..
I assume you noticed the “step” repetition that is noticable in the wake? Just want to be sure we are referring to the same issue.
I’ll adjust the liquid-like as suggested.
Indeed, I thought initially that it might appear where the foam and the ocean surface intersect, but just in case, can you try rendering it with ‘geometry mode’ enabled on the particle shader? This could give us some hints about it.
I changed “PHXFoam001” and “PHXFoam002” particle shaders to “Geometry mode” made no improvement to the stepping.
At this stage of the animation there is no “noice” added to the simulation and I guess it could be the undisturbed sim grid that is propagated to the renderd image. And since the upper boats hull is causing more disturbance it is not noticable until later in the animation. notice how the stepping is concentric in shape.
Could it help to simply have the grid shift (rotate in a oscillating manner) to mess up the rythm of the steps?
here without motion blur
I can login to nightlies but there are only old files available. I have contacted support so that they can update my account.
Very interesting - in that case, would it be possible to send the scene or a stripped version in case there are any valuable assets to Support? Btw, is your particle shader in point mode?