Animating fractal maps for realistic ocean waves?

[gsmith]

Hey there,

I've run into an issue that I can't seem to wrap my head around in tg2. I'm trying to animate the displacement of an ocean surface and obtain the following effect:

http://vimeo.com/4513150

The user who uploaded that video states that he used animated fractals to accomplish that effect, but I can't seem to animate the power fractal map I have attached to my water surface input..obviously this effect is possible otherwise he wouldn't have made the video..how would I go about creating this? I looked into the translation method but it doesn't produce the effect that I'm looking for..I just want to animate the power fractal in a way that will give the waves a realistic motion effect. What settings would I have to modify to obtain this? Thanks for any input

[Kadri]

There is sometimes confusion about this.
So it would be good to know if you have the "Terragen 2 with Animation" version or not , Gsmith?
http://www.planetside.co.uk/content/view/17/29/

[gsmith]

Indeed. I did some more experimenting with the shader nodes and came up with a better looking effect, I just attached a power fractal map and transform map to the water shader and redid the transform method on the X and Y axis, it seems to be working by using this method (not 100% as the example but closer than I was before). However, I have run into a seperate issue unrelated to the water, this time it has to do with the sky:

[Kadri]

Looks promising .

[gsmith]

Thanks, it's still a work in progress of course hehe. Do you know what could cause the sampling issue around the sun? It looks all distorted for some reason..I've tried to increase GI samples, quality, atmosphere/cloud samples, etc but nothing seems to work on getting rid of my issue.

[Oshyan]

I presume you're referring to the square artifacts which are probably due to the Acceleration Cache setting in the cloud layer's Quality tab. Try turning it to "Conservative" or "None".

- Oshyan

[FrankB]

These are by far the best waves I've seen made with TG2 so far: http://s331.photobucket.com/albums/l469/jimbowers/TESTS/?action=view&current=xsi_tg2_waves_test_06.mp4

Made by JimB

Regards,
Frank

[gsmith]

I presume you're referring to the square artifacts which are probably due to the Acceleration Cache setting in the cloud layer's Quality tab. Try turning it to "Conservative" or "None".

- Oshyan

Worked like a charm, thanks Oshyan

[gsmith]

These are by far the best waves I've seen made with TG2 so far: http://s331.photobucket.com/albums/l469/jimbowers/TESTS/?action=view&current=xsi_tg2_waves_test_06.mp4

Made by JimB

Regards,
Frank

That looks fantastic! I really wish I could replicate that type of effect, unfortunately I don't have access to Softimage and I have no experience with "ICE" or anything else from the software. I use 3ds max in my production pipeline as well but I would have no clue how to mimic that effect and export it to Terragen.

[Tangled-Universe]

These are by far the best waves I've seen made with TG2 so far: http://s331.photobucket.com/albums/l469/jimbowers/TESTS/?action=view&current=xsi_tg2_waves_test_06.mp4

Made by JimB

Regards,
Frank

Rendered in TG2, yes, but the waves themselves were made with XSI ICE.

[gsmith]

Update on my scene:



The only thing I really want to do is make the wave shapes more realistic and add some foam. Are there any tutorials available online that show simple ways to add foam to the water shader?

[Themodman101]

I would love to know this as well, it would be great as I see a some members including sea-foam. I will use the search bar and see if I come up with anything.