how to make (water) waves

[pascal_blanche]

argh no replies huh? I would have love to see some clever answers here.. There is so much plugins about creating waves.. Aready tried seascape but it's weird to use, maybe too much buggy to have good ralistic sea like reflexions you sould use a fallof with fresnel activated in it first.... It can help.. Well I tried to punch Willi Hammes (http://www.3dluvr.com/willi/main/) to get some tips abouts his amazing animated sea, but nope, He keeped his recipe secret ..
:D ... You should make some tries with realwave (http://www.nextlimit.com/realwave/realwave.html) tha'ts the plug he used at start. anybody help?

[chrom]

maybe with DNT

DNT for maya rocks but for max is poor
but try it

some info at: www.areteis.com

hope this help

uh correction, psunami is available for max
amazing stuff

[vertex]

Digital Nature tools has certainly been well recieved in a lot of packages, however I have found it very difficult to work with in max.

Lighting the and scene with a DNT sun setup is tricky as its too easy to over expose the entire thing. I found that in order to get a balanced shot I had to render out seperate elements and composite the shot back together.

Another problem is that in order to generate rolling waves the mesh density has to be quite high.

I'm hoping that when i get DNT plugin upgrade for max 4.2 that they have worked to increase the performance.

[parallax]

I'm currently breaking my head over this. I never use noise modifiers or wave spacewarps for water. Why not try displace on a high density mesh, use a noise map(preferably multiple with a blen material), animate it, and fix the materials (wich shouldnt be the hardest part about it).
When making "realistic" water, i always have the problem that it falls apart if you use the wrong camera angle.
It also take much experimentation.
I'm looking into it right now.

[vertex]

It might help to show a few stills of the view from your camera to put the scene into perspective. Have you thought of putting the water in at the post stage, there are some good water plugins for After Effects, Tsunami jumps to mind. That might be a way of doing it without generating a really high density mesh.

[TiGER]

hehehe... i haven't exactly gotten to that part yet :D
i was trying to get some ides of how to attack that scene from the very begining before i actually started on it, but i can whip up a basic low-res animation just so show the layout and camera movement.

- TiGER

[frruger]

A displace modifier with water map works O.K. . You can also put on top of that a noise modifier to make it a little bid random.
And with a Vol. Select modifier and a PArray it is you can make the wave tips to emit particles.

[wolf]

DNT could do, but a displacement map or a particle system could also. Tried it before.
Also, i´ve tried making a sea with really big waves. I did it by making it as a displacement map (animated), so that way the wakes was created. Then the foam on top can be created by duplicating the water and making a map for that.

[Psy]

I'd honestly say your best bet is to use Psunami for AfterEffects. They used it for Titanic and for Prince of Egypt. You can download a demo as well as see some quick sample movies made with it here. (http://www.digitalanarchy.com/da_products_psunami_b.htm)

Psy

[wolf]

Yeah, but don´t rely on the plug-in solution.

[Psy]

no matter what he uses, its going to have a plugin solution probably. or are you suggesting he uses the warps in max on a plane? becuase he could do that, but it'll need a lot and a lot of work. and it'll look bad. realwave, seascape, splash, all of those were designed because making waves in max is nigh near impossible.

[wolf]

Yeah, but it can be done, it´s just hard just like fire and so.
I have a tutorial in the book, 3ds max 4 magic about it.
But you´re right, it can look good made by an plug-in.

[DominikSusmel]

OK, try this... Get your hands on Learning Maya CD. It doesn't ship with version 4, so get version 3 somewhere. On that CD is Artbeats directory, and in there you will find a video called aw112.mov . That is a loop of a water surface Willi Hammes used for his water. But, IMO that solution sux, there is no real substitute for DNT in Maya and rendering water out with RenderWorld. well, maybe this Dreamscape of Sitni Sati will make something of it, but don't rase hopes yet, Areteis is still the king...

[TapioKa]

Actually, I've been working on a similar problem myself, and I can't use any plugins due to budget contraints.

So, I'm using a combination of two spacewarps in slightly different directions, a raytrace material with several animated layers of fractal noise. It looks ok, but I can't get the frothy white breakers to work too well.

If I have time, I will try the animated displacement map with layered noise, see if that looks nicer.

What I wish someone would make is a plugin, that can do high poly count planes only where the camera is facing and based on distance. Then you could get the detail that you need where you need it, without a unnecessary dense mesh.

I still have to deal with a ship's frothy wake. Got to figure how to do that one nicely.

Suggestions?:)

[Sgt.ArchAngel]

actualy i had emailed Willi Hammes before asking him about his ocean as well and got a reply back
and he didnt keep it totaly secret from me
its all in how you ask him..try again

the main thing he said was using a video clip of oceans/waves for the main effect of the texturing (thats all i needed to know)

[BrandonD]

If you're looking for a plugin solution then check out Dreamscape www.afterworks.com

Of course it can be done by hand, but not as easily.

[jaswane]

I have made a big offshore suply boat in MAX. Its 120 meters long and 27 meters breadth; a quite big ship.

http://home.online.no/~jaswane/bilder/ship.jpg

What I want is it to make wakes and foam like this animation

Boat animation from Afterworks (http://www.sitnisati.com/anims/BoatGO3.avi)


I have tried Dreamscape but it always crashes on things as big (in meters/size, not polygons) as my boat. It works nice with smaller objects.

I have also tried RealWave, but have given it up due to much simulation time.

It looks like a problem few have worked on, and i would like some tips and hints from you good guys... I know water isn't the easiest thing to do in 3D, but then again it would be great to solve the challenge.

Andreas

[rayboy]

have a look at Pete Draper's site www.xenomorphic.co.uk/education

he details how to make a perfect storm wave at the link below.

http://www.xenomorphic.co.uk/doc_psw.htm

and how to do stormy waters here:
http://www.xenomorphic.co.uk/doc_seamotion.htm

[jaswane]

The main problem I have is to make the boat physically interfere with the water to genreate accurate waves. Dreamscape have this capability, but its a little bit buggy. Dreamscape also have an engine spacewarp, so you kan actually attach an object to the engine spacewarp and the spacewarp will push it through the water.

A

[EricChadwick]

How about using a lower-res stand-in for the boat, to generate the interaction? Seems like that wouldn't be as error-prone.

[Daz]

i'd probably just (after i had made the water and its materials) just use an FDD box or F(whatever the last two letters are) make a couple extra control points and just remember how water works, as in the waves travel
_-____ | __-___ | ___-__ | ____-_ | _____- |

u know how i mean in waves n stuff, the texture will auto maticly stretch for you, ohh yeh and use an animated texture to make it more real that moves with the waves roughly..

Ok basicly what i'm saying is use tricks with the fdd box with an animated texture, using the stretching of the texture to your advantage, you can pretty much shape the waves that way and because the animated texture follows, it looks mad. i'd hook up some particle generator at the back off the boat and make the control points spread out after the boat goes over them. its a rough idea, but probably worth a go. Displacement, bump and reflection maps would be your good friends here as well

[cache]

jaswane > if you are still visiting cgtalk -> how did you manage to do the trick ?:)
please reply !

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