Is there any way to model realistic sea surface with stormy waves, foam, waterdust etc?
http://img385.imageshack.us/img484/3020/askerikruvazrticonderogwv2.jpg
I can model the 3d plane with some noise applied. Then I need the material (3dsMAX) or shader (MentalRay) with the waves on bump channel, reflection, SSS and so on. But how about foam? Is there any articles, tutorials or forum threads about the sea modeling problem? Any advices will be appreciated!
Foam is hard one yea. Usually we use a procedural thing that generates foam masks based on the height of your geometry. Some application like Realflow can do both foam masks and particle foam. I’ve never understand how to process it procedurally. Foam particle in real flow can be extremely slow.
For MAX I believe there’s dreamscape that can generate foam masks.
OK, but there is another question for me. How to choose realistic SSS settings? Which colors to use for each layer in the material of stormy sea? Blue? Green? Black?.. I’ve never use SSS shaders \for non-organic surfaces…
In my experience, rendering water is most dependent on your reflection environment, not sss. In fact I don’t think that using sss would do you much good.
I would work on your reflection, and your foam first, and then if you are still wishing to see through your water more complex, then worry about refraction and transparency. And sophistication in your refracted light would likely be coming from your displacement / model / bump, and doing any sort of refractive glossiness or sss would not be necessary.
Thank you, TheOnlyAaron.
Now I’m trying to model realistic bump. I use Mental Ray with 3dsMax2011, and all its standard shaders (Noise, Smoke, Waves, lumeOcean) produce smooth calm waves while I need sharp stormy surface…
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