water animation

[dorianvan]

See what you think of my animation so far.  Here is the Terragen file.

I'm wondering if it's possible to create water animation utilizing a slower moving river in a particular direction as well as have general ripples on top with a fractal blendshader for smoother, less ripply areas. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7ss4gaTOso (about 1:10 in)

Also, is there a way to use two transform shaders blended into the water object, not just the one?

If anyone has some ideas, I'd love to hear them.

[Dune]

You can make your waves separately from the water shader and have those PF's (no color if after the water shader) animated each by their own transform shader. So you can make standing waves as well moving waves, and perhaps move the whole lot with yet another transform shader. If you blend small waves by a larger perlin, you can create flat/rippled patches.

[dorianvan]

Thanks Ulco, sounds easy but I'm having trouble applying a second transform shader to the same object?

[Dune]

You can put the loose transform between the 2 fractals, use the input of the transform.

[dorianvan]

Hi Ulco, I couldn't get what you were talking about working; perhaps you could upload an example tgd. This is what I have so far, see what you think, and thanks a bunch for being willing to help.

[dorianvan]

You can kind of see it here on my animation, but the water starts off slower and gets faster paced over time. Is there a way to keep it at a fixed rate speed?

[Dune]

As far as I can tell, this should work. However, the first PF gives very subtle big waves, you might not see them very good (I haven't seen your wmv yet). From the second PF you use the color to drive displacement, if you want to use the displacement settings you can hook it differently.... well I changed and added some stuff (not very sophisticated, but very simple). Don't know if it'll work (it should), but you can try.

[dandelO]

For a fixed rate of speed, use a 'linear' curve for animated parameters, not 'TCB'(bottom-left of the animation panel, for each curve). I assume Ulco's file already does but, just to answer the question asked above.

[dorianvan]

Thanks, it makes sense the curve adjuster would be somewhere, now I know where.
@Ulco: here is your animation adjustment rendered. The sea foam is riding some waves, but it appears it's not riding others. What do you think?

[Dune]

I'll have to see your animation on another computer, but I guess it has to do with the height I set in the distribution shader. I told you it's very simple, quick and a theoretical setup, I never tested it.
If you'd use the colors of a PF to make the displacement through a displacement shader (instead of the PF's displacement settings), you could also adjust that color (or even warp it slightly) and feed that into the blend input of the surface shader providing the white foam color. Then you'd have more control, especially if you also use the distribution shader as a go-between (for height and/or slope). Lots of possibilities.

I'll check out the animation later. 

[Dune]

Just saw the animation (doesn't look very good without the real water), and I think you'd have to take the stretched foam out to start with. It doesn't move either. So I'd concentrate on the foam tops, or the waves themselves.

[dorianvan]

Thanks Ulco, I appreciate your input and will have to give that some study. In the meantime, here is a calmer water look and a slightly moving sky. I think I have to look at some information for the "animation check" button, because my settings are kind of high (detail .7, AA 4), yet it's still very grainy. On a side question for anybody, is there a way in TG to have imported objects "bob" up and down in the waves naturally?

[dandelO]

Yes, plug your final water displacement node into a populator's 'terrain shader' input, if you just need one object, set the distribution/spacing accordingly in the populator to only create one instance. Also, make sure to check 'populate every frame', as the surface is moving.

*** Edit. Offset the object node's Y transform negatively, too, as you'll likely want to have it in the water, not just on it, unless it's just some leaves or something really light, then offsetting shouldn't be necessary.

[dorianvan]

Dandelo, it's subtle because my waves are subtle, and I will adjust those as needed, but looks like it worked. Thank you. I spread out the object population, but when I get them too close, they overlap into each other (some). Is there a way to avoid this? Also, haven't tested it yet, but do you know if the objects can rotate randomly (slightly) independent of each other?

[Dune]

If you decrease the spacing variation (towards zero) your objects are more evenly spread. You might find a subtle midway. Independent rotation may possibly be done by separating your pop into several sub-pops (by using PF masks and merge shaders), and have each sub-pop rotate a different way. Just thinking aloud.