Iceland guy

[Dune]

Another experiment with surf. It unfortunately took 4 hours to render (RT) and was almost choking on the last small bits. I love TG, but 'complex' reflections are a pain (I'm always in a hurry ). And the water doesn't even have transparency, it's just a default shader and a reflective one (though set to smooth reflections, I must admit).

[Hannes]

Amazing image! The water looks brilliant! Too bad about the long rendertimes. Yes, reflections on a displaced surface seen from a flat angle are quite a problem in TG.

[Stormlord]

WOW!!!
The waves are great and the water looks also good to me.
Iceland is in the atlantic and the water looks pretty cold this way. The things I would work on is the foam. There are no details in it, its just pure whitewater.
Even if you have some splash splinters below in your image (Great effect!). 

STORMLORD

[Dune]

Thanks guys. The problem with these setups is the slowness of the render, even with my superfast machine. So I hesitate very much to do very thick foam. If you look carefully, there's a slight displacement, but I admit it can be much rougher. I am now experimenting with different ways of reflections, but it's pretty hard.

[Hannes]

Maybe this might be helpful. I once shared a seafoam pattern in the file sharing section, but I'm too lazy to find the link now. So here it is again. It's based on something dandelO once created to use as cracks (or something). It's only the pattern, not a shader. There is only one power fractal inside. You can control the warping there with the displacement multiplier. The last shader in the network is a transform input shader. You can use this to control the size of it all. As it is, the size is more or less real world scale. (See image).

[Dune]

Thanks Hannes. I think I might have that foam somewhere. Haven't looked inside yet, but I think it's a group of 4 or so blue node Voronois(e). I used a warped perlin ridge, inversely multiplied by a voronoi billow (for some holes). Just managed to get bit more structure in the foam, withou much added render time. Next one will be funny

[Dune]

Updated version, now suddenly on a warmer, somewhat familiar beach. No reflective shader used, hence the speed (9mins).

[Hannes]

[Dune]

And now a version with a reflective shader (last node in line), and one with a (10m transparent) water shader merged with a default shader (10% added color and translucency). Title has render times.

[Hannes]

Well, the translucent part of the waves against the sun looks better in your reflective shader image, but the shallow water looks of course better with a water shader, unless you can fake the beach shining through somehow.

[Dune]

If you have the sun at left, you'd expect only the waves seen towards that angle to be translucent, but further away you also see the light green in the whole wave, which is not good. I also faked the light through the wave by some luminosity (by altitude), but that doesn't work for those waves either.
Faking the beach shining through is not a problem, you can add the color of the terrain to somewhere in the water line. But the problem with these setups is that the more you want to refine, the more problems arise.

[KlausK]

The first one is my favourite. (not a very helpful "critical" remark, I know.. .)

CHeers, Klaus

[Dune]

Trying another setup, but I'm not getting what I want yet.

[denders]

It looks very nice. But, when I watch ocean waves at the shore, the lines of waves don't usually conform uniformly to the shore outline. My perception is that the waves are in sort of a 'straight' line and will arrive at the shoreline at angles in some places. Particularly if you look in the distance.

[Dune]

Of course, this is not perfect, and waves/surf are influenced by wind, current and sandbanks, etc, but I'm already glad I got this far. I don't know if it's possible to warp the lines (sinuses based on ground altitudes) in a more natural manner. Maybe, one day....