New Gathering Storm Concept

[mesh-maker]

Excellent work!

One question though: Why does it appear as if the water ripples (shiny) are moving in a layer of their own on top of the waves - this is most prominent if you observe the white wave-heads closely.

:thumbsup:

[Mibus]

Notably I have been able to reduce the render time from over 1 hour per frame to just under 2 mins per frame.

That's a fairly hefty difference - what got you the gains?

[BLENDER-FREAK]

HEy COG nice work as always hope u make some tutorials for this:thumbsup:

[tmr232]

that is one amazing piece of work!!!:thumbsup:
now, a few crits:
-the ocean looks great, but i think it needs to be a little darker and closer to blue.
-the seagulls look great too, but i think they should be a bit whiter. the wing flaps are ok, but i think they are too continues and repetative- they all look the same, i think that each flap should be a little different.
anyway, the animation looks fantastic!!! keep it up!

[cogfilms]

Hi All,

Thanks for all your kind and useful words. I have combined responces in this single reply.

One question though: Why does it appear as if the water ripples (shiny) are moving in a layer of their own on top of the waves - this is most prominent if you observe the white wave-heads closely.

I think there are 2 reasons why that may be interpreted like that.




The technique I use to create the wave crests, a kind of multiple emiting procedural texture cannot alter the specularity of that part of the waves. Yet! Wave crests scatter the light more randomly although I guess there specularity will still be quite high. This is a never ending quest so I will continue to get closer.
I have used another light source that adds some specularity from the left side. This was to give the waves a little more depth. However, I probably need to drop its level a little?
Of course creating a looping concept means that imperfections become very prominent after a few minutes. Which is good of course.


that is one amazing piece of work!!!:thumbsup:
now, a few crits:
-the ocean looks great, but i think it needs to be a little darker and closer to blue.
-the seagulls look great too, but i think they should be a bit whiter. the wing flaps are ok, but i think they are too continues and repetative- they all look the same, i think that each flap should be a little different.
anyway, the animation looks fantastic!!! keep it up!

OK I had a chance to modify 2 areas from your comments. I have slightly darkened and blued the sea and brightened the gulls. I have been able to do this without re-rendering any of the individual animations. With reference to the repeating nature of the gull wing flapping. There are 2 gull meshes, with different flap rates, dupliverted to a particle emitter. I could possibly have added a third but hey I was running out of time. Here is the darker concept:-

darker-gathering-storm (http://www.cogfilms.com/gathering-storm-darker.html) QT 5Mb

Personally I think the gulls tend to dissapear into the cloud so I prefer the old gulls. However, the darker blue ocean is nice.

HEy COG nice work as always hope u make some tutorials for this

Thanks and yes Tutorials will follow.

That's a fairly hefty difference - what got you the gains?

Mainly by removing Raytracing and by reducing the vertex count of the ocean meshes. But I will detail the tricks I used in a tutorial.


Cog

[kattkieru]

Hey Cog!

The second ocean looks a lot better. However, have you ever thought of duplicating the ocean plane right beneath the waves and setting it to darker? I've been thinking that in a real ocean, between the crests you'd see a bit into the water and that's where the darkness becomes really evident.

Kind of like subsurface scattering. I'm not suggesting you use that, but something to make it look like the light is passing into the waves more?

Either way, I'm always excited to see new posts from you. Keep it up!

[cogfilms]

That's a fairly hefty difference - what got you the gains?

Hi Mibus,

I partially answered this in an earlier reply but here's a little more detail.


I mainly lowered the render time by not using Raytracing and also by a special technique that allowed me to reduce the mesh complexity (vertex count) whilst maintaining a large to the horizon ocean.

In its simplest form there are 2 planes one on top of the other. The lower has 4 vertices and stretches to the horizon. Slightly above this is a more complex plane subdivided less as it gets further from the camera. Both planes use the same material but the simple plane has displacement turned off. The trick works because the displacement waves on the top complex plane mask the transition between the 2 planes.

The material used is mapped to empties thus enabling the planes to be scaled or moved without the material resizing. One could even move the camera with the complex plane tracked to it making it possible to PAN or move the camera in any direction.

Cog

[Nitefyre]

Hey Cog,
Always enjoy seeing your work and seeing how you combine blender's features. I think this is definately getting somewhere but what bothers me is still the spec flashes. You shouldn't be able to see them that clearly from this camera angle. They are appearing near the tops of the crests of the waves on the opposite side of the sun, I would think this would be the place where you could not see them at all. Maybe play with that second light source a little more...

-Nitefyre

[Eckie]

Hey!

That sea movement looks stunning man, can't wait to get a detailed tut on that.
I got two comments for you:

- I think there would be more reflection of the sun in reality. With the sun so low in the sky, there would be reflections scattered all over the sea. Only the line on the right, and some reflection on the lower part of the screen really doesn't work for me. (And then, like Nitefire said, in the lower left corner the reflection is really on the wrong side of the waves.)
- The camera-movement feels really artificial. Are you trying to simulate boat-movement here? If so: the waves are really low and short, so tilting from left to right would take much shorter, and the boat wouldn't tilt this much. (And I've got experience in this field ;))

[cogfilms]

Hi all

Thanks for all your useful comments. Several I have taken and applied to a new concept.

http://www.cogfilms.com/images/gathering-storm3.jpg

In particular I have completely changed the lighting taking on board the comments on specular lighting in particular. I have also slowed down the small & tiny waves which give a better or less frenetic movement.

I have also changed the colour of the waves significantly. When I detail how this was achieved in a tutorial you will see that the lighting almost paints the effect of the water. This was to obtain a raytrace like effect without needing raytrace turned on with the resultant long render times. I only had to re-render the waves section and each frame took about 1min 20sec to render on my old AMD FX2700. That's about another 27% saving on my last wave render so it's been useful advice to re-light the scene for that also.

You will notice that the seagulls are also much lighter again and this time I think it works quite nicely. Again this only required a small adjustment in my compositing software, Adobe Premiere.

Lastly I have added a simple soundtrack to take you into the scene. I hope you all brought your sowesters with you.

gathering-storm-fx.mov (QT 3.4Mb Stereo Sound) (http://www.cogfilms.com/gathering-storm-fx.html)

Enjoy.


Cog

[oxygen_77]

hey Cog, great job on the clouds and fog! The sunlight coming through looks great as well. The only complaint I have (sorry) is that the water feels more like what you would see coming out from behind the back of a motorboat, and not what you would see as a storm pushed the water around. I think this is due to the amount of whitecap and the sharpness of the waves. In the ocean, storms seem to create larger rolling waves with the smaller sharper waves kicking up spray along the crests. So I think if you scale the current wave texture down to about a quarter of the current size and add a texture to create rolling/rounded waves at the size of your current sharper waves it would help...

see how in the image below the water is more churned up from the boat's propellers than from the storm itself. The stormwater has less whitecap. Anyway, great job and I hope this comment helps.
http://www.monsoonstudios.com/Blender/storm_ok.jpg

[cogfilms]

Hey Cog!

The second ocean looks a lot better. However, have you ever thought of duplicating the ocean plane right beneath the waves and setting it to darker? I've been thinking that in a real ocean, between the crests you'd see a bit into the water and that's where the darkness becomes really evident.

Kind of like subsurface scattering. I'm not suggesting you use that, but something to make it look like the light is passing into the waves more?

Either way, I'm always excited to see new posts from you. Keep it up!

Hi kattieru,

After re-reading this thread I realised that I had not directly responded to your post. My apologies for that omission.

Your idea of having the lower simple plane show through the complex upper crests plane unfortunately won’t work. Transparency in the wave crest material produces real problems at the peaks of the waves. In a sense it’s a shortcoming of the way Blender handles alphered materials, particularly when you don’t use raytrace. I’ve attempted to fake transparency that shows better on the areas of the water with the sun specularity on.

However, that’s not to say it’s impossible…..Pause as he extracts another tooth from the great white shark at his feet.

Cog

[cogfilms]

hey Cog, great job on the clouds and fog! The sunlight coming through looks great as well. The only complaint I have (sorry) is that the water feels more like what you would see coming out from behind the back of a motorboat, and not what you would see as a storm pushed the water around. I think this is due to the amount of whitecap and the sharpness of the waves. In the ocean, storms seem to create larger rolling waves with the smaller sharper waves kicking up spray along the crests. So I think if you scale the current wave texture down to about a quarter of the current size and add a texture to create rolling/rounded waves at the size of your current sharper waves it would help...

see how in the image below the water is more churned up from the boat's propellers than from the storm itself. The stormwater has less whitecap. Anyway, great job and I hope this comment helps.

Hi oxygen_77,

Thanks for your reply. That's a great picture by the way. Over the last few years I have Google Image searched, scanned, photographed and pinched, about 18Gb of useful images. Indeed I think I have that one in there somewhere.

I totally agree about the crests not being kind of crisp enough and too widespread. However, I have probably taken the Blender procedural textures to their limits here. Beyond this we are either looking at hand drawn textures or maybe some new procedurals if and when the ocean simulator appears in Blender. Until then I must get back to turning base metal into gold :D.

Cog

PS That's not to say it's impossble............................

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