Ghost ship

[chris_x422]

Hi all,

Here's a quick glimpse of a show I've been losing sleep over.
It's a documentary about a 17th century Dutch trading ship that sank in the Baltic sea.
The environment and ocean animation is all terragen, with some added realflow elements.

Snippet of animation here; http://www.1isok.com/ship_01.htm

[attachimg=#]

[Traveller2]

Very nice. I like the moody atmosphere. Perhaps some more fog (a volumetric alto layer) around the ship? Whatever you do, do not say "Release the Kraken". 

[Tangled-Universe]

Wow cool

I like it how a big wave crashes into the bow of the ship and that you see water flooding down within the ship (around a third of the movie).
Very nice integration of those realflow elements!

Can you elaborate a bit on how you did this?
For example: How did you animate the ship? It looks like the water is animated in TG self to me, so how did you match-move TG's water with realflow? Did you export the watersurface's geometry first? Just to drop a few questions for starters!

Cheers,
Martin

[chris_x422]

Cheers Martin.

Getting the workflow going for this was tricky, because I had to decide weather to go with a full realflow ocean, or terragen ocean.
After a few tests it was obvious that the terragen ocean was far more varied, detailed and quicker to achieve procedurally than using realflow.  

Basically, once I'd got an ocean pass out of terragen that I thought would work, I'd then Import that sequence as an image plane in maya.
That way I could animate the ship reasonably enough to match the render.
There are more accurate ways, but this was quick and simple.

I then took the ship into realflow to generate the splash and foam and mist elements.
This is was tricky, setting the simulation up to match the speed and turbulence took about a day.
I then used the surface mesh from realflow to black hole or matte out the base of the ship and make it appear that that the terragen waves are passing the ship, and the other elements then sit on top.

Hope that makes some sense.

Thanks Traveller.
There may be a few more tweaks yet, depends on time.

Chris

[Henry Blewer]

I like the interaction of the waves with the ship also. It's done well.

[chris_x422]

Thanks njeneb.

I think the show is airing on Nat Geo fairly soon.

[Walli]

nice!

[AnneCHPostma]

I like the overall look and feel. However if you intend to work on it a bit more I think two things could add to the general stormy feel. I think the sails could use a little roughening and probably a lesser 'clean' look?

The second thing (and it still bothers me after watching the animation three times) are the waves up front. They look more like it is rushing water instead of the fierce waves in the middle and back part. I put my arm over the bottom half of the animation and it looked a lot more convincing then. I would expect a more up and down motion in the front instead of the sideways looking movement. It is especially visible on the left-bottom part.

But who am I ... I still have to start my first Terragen 2 rendered image so ...

Overall great animation and since I am dutch the story appeals to me anyway *smiles*. I love what you did with the water at and around the ship.

Oh ... excellent demo reel too!

[chris_x422]

Thanks Walli, Annuh.

I do agree about the foreground water, at the time it was a compromise due to time etc.
Sails were also toned down on request.
As this is becoming a bit of a test for me developing separate elements (realflow etc) I might yet revisit that ocean displacement.

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated.

Chris