I easily get triggered by things I see and read here on the forum (and indeed other input of images), whether it be rocks, sand, lush vegetation or whatever, so I was once again tempted to dig up my old water files (by Dandel0's simple shape waves). The terrain is quite awful, and I don't yet understand why the reflective shore line goes up near the bluff, and I also found out that I need to pay more attention to artistic composition, but the water came out quite nice.
Same principle as I used in my NWDA water scheme, a bit simplified. There is another one at NWDA which is interesting, by the way.
Now, I got the idea again to make a partially sand covered railway track, so here we go again...
great waves
Waves are super-cool.
surfs up!
looking good!
Nicely done, as usual, Ulco! Great! 8)
Can't wait to see where this goes.
You seem to be able to get out the whole alphabet before I can utter a syllable. Very nice work on these waves with the foam. I'm thinking you've got enough techniques going here to write a book.
I think it is most important to know what certain nodes do. Every setup is different and it's not that you can just plug in some pre-made tgc and it's perfect. The nodes behave differently in almost every setup, and to counter the bad effects, you'd have to know where to look for the mistake, and conjure up something. That's what got me addicted anyway, it's an adventure.
What I wanted to say, is that it's not easy to write it all down for everyone to make perfect renders right away. A lot of experimentation will always be involved (I guess).
I have found the same with my much simpler terrain setups. I have tried and tried to explain how things work in a tutorial I am trying to write, but I always leave out something... Different types of terrain and clouds need various node setups; all of which takes practice and experimentation.
Back to the thread... Your waves are awesome. I think Hannes or Dandelo are the only two other people here who can compete with this.
For me it is trial and error until the result gets to a point where I think it is acceptable. However, experimentation is learning. Both you Ulco and both Martins; plus Hetzen and many others continue to contribute to the pique the enthusiasm of all of us with your inspiring works.
Waves like these are essential for shoreline scenes.
The update is going to be a bit nicer again, but it took (as said) a lot of tweaking.
Update. Still some glitches, but I got some more ideas this morning...
Let alone seeing this, you can almost hear it ...fine work here Ulco.
Looks nice Dune :)
Did you tried a kind of your rail road method here ?
I am not sure Dune ,but it seems to me that after a certain point in waves you have to use cheats ,
or-and there have to be another new TG2 software feature!
But your rail road did surprised me very much , so i am not so sure now :)
Thats extremely impressive! as choronr said i can almost hear the waves! how long did this take to render?
It took 5 hours, but the soft shadows were partly to blame. I even tried to restrict the real water to the front with a distance shader and have the rest covered by a reflective (RT) shader for time's sake, but I couldn't get it to work properly (yet). Trying to work it out took more time than rendering the water :P
@ Kadri: No railway method here, but something completely different.
Having done a lot of ocean work recently, but outside of Terragen, I've one question... can you make this move? ;D
I'd be really interested in finding out if it's possible. A convincing animated shoreline at this sort of angle normally involves some cheating with compositing and the like, but to get the wave movement right would be brilliant given tg2's lighting and so on.
wow!, dune your renders are groundbreaking stuff, and that last render looks really great :)
Quote from: Dune on April 18, 2011, 02:49:12 AM
...
@ Kadri: No railway method here, but something completely different.
OK! Thanks , Ulco :)
Well. Might as well throw in my towel then, Ulco's got it covered! :D
Last one looks really cool, man.
I like how lots of us end up down the same roads in here every now and again, whether it's snow, roads, waves, colour variation, whatever, it's cool to see all the different ways of skinning the same cat that each different person uses.
Hi Martin, I just added my opinion to your thread (telling you you're all wrong :D :D :D ). I'm still following the method I also have at NWDA, with a get altitude, sinus, displacement, then subtract this from the basic terrain, and you have your basic waves. But then a bit more complicated. There's one rendering now, which is a little better than the last one.... coming up.
Another try... now for some landscape.
WOW! that looks great! Most excellent scenes!
Reminds me of some places I was in Africa by the sea.
It's still very hard to get right, but at least I have some other shapes here... broke it off, because it was taking too long.
Now that was looking super. Really nice. So sad you closed the render just when it was
just about to finish. I will suggest to render it again once more. Its really good scene.
Congrats!
The bird on the seashore is also a great idea too.
I think waves maybe the hardest phenomena to re-create. You are close, don't get discouraged.
QuoteYou are close, don't get discouraged.
Not as close as Jon is right now, and I am getting a little frustrated, as it is so hard to get right. But I've got another idea...
Here's the other idea. Still needs work and there are two minor artifacts in the sea, but alas.
You're coming along. The curlers near the shore look good. I think more need to be added; this is probably part of what you are working on...
Nice work Ulco, I completely sympathise with this subject being frustrating to crack. I think there's a way for you not to have to use a twist and shere node to get the curlers, which I'll need to check out at some stage. But from curler to break is quite quick, so I think we don't have to get too tied down with that part of the wave shape.
I've kind of ditched the water shader too, as it's quite render costly, and the look I'm after has quite a lot of foam on the shore edge. I've used something similar to your quick water shader set up you posted the other day.
Each iteration is bringing forth improvement. Time, patience and stick-to-it-ivness is on your side. I hope sometime we all will learn how to do this.
Update, with another feature I found, foamy water washing up the shore. Still needs perfection....
very nice water
can it be animated ? ;D
That latest one looks really good, like a lake shore or maybe a bay, where the waves are calmer.
- Oshyan
I can lift the waves as high as I want, maybe make a tsunami. I don't know about animation; that's not really my thing. It might. I might try...
This latest iteration looks outstanding.
This look very close to the real thing , Dune .
Holy cow, this looks so real!!
The latest one looks very real. Great job Dune!
You got it! Looks very realistic. Animating this will make for a whole new set of difficulty I would think. This is way beyond my skills.
That's looking very good Ulco. The texturing is perfect. You've blended your sine bands in very well.
I'm not sure, but doesn't the water shader restrict altitude readings, I seem to remember when we were first playing around with this that the altitude settings in a surface layer after a water node doesn't really work.
Wow best yet
Wow this is beautiful... Very realistic! Great work!
The recent update to that second scene image is absolutely amazing.
How did you create that foamy water effect? The whole scene is really excellent!
Many congrats on a fine job well done. I hope one day to be able to create such
a scene too.
@Jon; These are not sinus bands, and it's a totally different concept. DUNE'S SURF VERSION 2.0 :D :D Made another breakthrough yesterday, but it's still not perfect. This will be interesting for the NWDA I think, to at least get a small reward for the days browsing my brain (I'll PM some of you contributing guys, though).
Here's another setup, but I forgot to switch from 'fake water' to real water, hence the lack of transparency. I now need to find a way to make smooth lengthwise wave patterns, but that's a matter of time (perhaps a stretched perlin 3D will even work). The surf here is too close together and too high.
I'm not sure about the surf bending to match the shore. If I remember correctly, the waves 'march in line' to strike the shore. This is still a very nice render. I like the water like this also. I don't think the transparency would be very noticeable at this viewing angle.
If waves are driven by wind, they'll march in line, but gentler waves more relate to changes in depth, I'd say. Anyway, in this method it is kind of controllable. Kind of! There's another restriction; you can't just plug this water/surf into any terrain. Coastline formation and surf go 'hand in hand'. 8)
Here's one with proper water, but the next one will have better lines of surf, with a new set of PF's. And a foaming reef!
*Big Applause*
Man, that looks excellent! 8) I would love to be on that beach relaxing with a cool drink , getting
a suntan. Looks mighty nice to my eyes. Love the detail with the little bird on the sandy beach too. Its those
little details that sometimes make an image even more pleasent and beautiful.
Great job on another classy scene Mr.Dune!
Cheers
MAX
The water transparency, wet line and debris line all add up to a realistic shore.
Update...
these two are the best yet IMO. :)
the way waves curve around in the background looks like its some weird unnatural current you would'nt want to get caught in swimming.
:o :D
Oh man this is beautiful ...must package it up so that those of us who don't have the brains to create such waves could use it. Great stuff Ulco!
Very stunning work. The water does work better with the proper shader. The other shader works very nicely for testing. I hope you do offer this on NWDA.
Wow, the level of realism is just unmatched..this is something I've been trying to learn forever now, absolutely mind blowing! Foam seems to be my only problem right now..no matter what I try I can never seem to get it down. This is just amazing.
Thats really looking amazing Dune, I love the seafoam.. Only one thing, doesnt the wet line on the beach look a little large for the size of the waves?
You're right about the width of the wet sand. I also forgot to uncheck RayTrace, so it's a little too 'perfectly' mirroring.
imprseeive job ! congratulations for this one man ^^
really nice render
I have now made another setup (again) where the breaking waves are distributed along an adjustable width of sinuses, instead of by stretched fractals. Kind of like a set of sinus waves from left to right (X direction). Now I only need to find a procedural way to get the waves/sinuses on the left wider than on the right (or the other way around). Some other blue node having to do with the X value, I'd say, but I can't yet figure out how. In fact I wouldn't know if the wider waves (in deeper water) are necessarily lower than the smaller breaking waves... in that case they sinus tops on the left should also be a little grayer than the smaller waves on the right.
This is part of the node network. Does anyone have an idea?
Here's a render, just finished, where you can see the effect of the sinuses. It's a test, so the terrain is no good. The sinuses are all the same width, which is what I want to change...
Looks a bit like a wave tank. I think the waves may be too regular, which is what you are working on... The water coloring and transparency depth seem quite good.
Wow that looks really complex! :o
All I can say is... AMAZING ART!
*Big Applause*
by the way, I found a nice cool beach chair 8) in various file formats (.obj) if you would like
to use in your cool beach paradise scene... http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/531066
It´s FREE!
Hi Dune,
That's some really cool stuff you've been doing, very impressive :-).
Just to be a pain, waves are often considered to be trochoidal in shape rather than sine:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/waves/watwav2.html
My intention for implementing 3D waves was to do it using a trochoidal wave. One criticism of your waves is they look a little thick and lumpy near the shore. The characteristics of trochoidal waves might give a bit better look.
Not getting down on what you've been doing, just suggesting an avenue to explore to make it even better :-).
Regards,
Jo
Here's a formula which might work nicely:
http://rfwisdom.wordpress.com/page/6/ (http://rfwisdom.wordpress.com/page/6/)
As you see the reference he mentions is the same Jo just mentioned.
Thanks Jo and Martin. Interesting stuff. It seems the trochoidal waves are slightly pointier at the tops. The problem with my waves is that I can't do it mathematically (just no good at math). If this formula can be 'projected' onto a simple shape, and based on an X value, I'd be VERY happy though.
Jon has mentioned cooperation on this, and we might work out something together that's better than my method, but right now I have deleted all math again and made an irregular series of bands (PF's) of different sizes, which, so it seems, give a very nice effect. The sinuses are too regular by themselves, and should be influenced by the sea bottom (and wind). With the PF's I fake that effect, but it won't work in animation.
Large render now steaming.
I can get that shape in math, and I can control steepness and breakpoint according to depth, and I'm pretty sure I can get surface layer masks to match that displacement. What I'd like to do is get the waves to have the option of direction as well as land slope influence, but first things first is to get the life cycle control gradients right, with the right constant relationships, ie wave count, max height, crash point etc.
I've done a lot of the preliminary work to see if these techniques are possible, I may even have a way of making the wave curl too!!! But all this gets very messy node wise, and it's really easy to get lost in the math when trying to solve problems. I'm hoping Matt will make a node modification that will make this somewhat easier.
I'm hoping that Dune could possibly help out with the texturing of various surface layers, whilst I chug along with the displacement mechanics.
This seems like a fruitful 'crashing' coop. In the meantime, I've rendered out 2 more with the power fractal waves. Just hit the seeds a couple of times, and changed the sun and birds. Not perfect as always, but the principle is here. I will compile a tutorial and put this up at NWDA soon.
What ever you are doing, you are doing great. *Big applause* Those are some pretty amazing scenes.
I personally like the first image posted from the latest two concepts. The sunlight coming
in from the right side and casting some light and shadow on the cliffs is just super.
Also as a very good idea , was to add the seagulls flying about over the cliffs and waves.
A most wonderful looking and realistic scene. Congrats! Both are Top notch artworks, but as a
favourite, I prefer the first scene as best of the two. Its just perfect.
I have been checking out all your previous artworks and posts and I have to tell you
that you have a great artistic vision for these sort of scenes. I would not be surprised
if a Hollywood studio executive or film director would give you a call for you to go and work for
a few films doing matte paintings.
Did you know WETA Studios with Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings Director)
is currently working on a new film based on the old "Planet of the Apes" classic series movies? Remember
the classic movies with Charlton Heston? Those were very cool to see. (Check out YouTube for latest trailer)
The new film will be a re-make of the "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and it will be set somewhere in San Francisco,
California (USA), where many such cliffs and waves, like the ones you have just created are found.
These scenes you are creating could very well pass for a California type of cliff with waves. So Matte
painting digital-art is defenitly your calling as an artist, but I am sure you are also very creative artist in other fields too.
*Big Applause* I wish you the best in whatever you do man, you got style!
Thanks for your kind words, Max. I sure hope to do more with TG2, as the bucket of usual commissions in my field is slowly getting empty due to our new governments' policy. I have indeed thought about combining TG2, modeling, photography and painting into the production of images/backgrounds. I am getting experienced by now, even got work (paintings) in a US museum's collection... marketing is the main problem. Check out my website (underneath).
Anyway, time to spare to get into TG2, and here's another seascape. Just a quick detail 0.4/AA4 render to test.
If anyone is interested; I've just uploaded an illustrated tutorial and 2 tgd's at the NWDA store for a modest sum. http://store.nwdanet.com/terragen2store/6-terragen-2-presets/23-water.html (http://store.nwdanet.com/terragen2store/6-terragen-2-presets/23-water.html)
It's a completely new method, and has some interesting advantages, as well as some limitations. Here are two sample images of the tgd's to wet your appetites ;)
Lovely images, heading over to the store now :)
Richard
That's quick!
Nice one, Ulco, well done! :)
Quote from: Dune on April 29, 2011, 11:37:44 AM
If anyone is interested; I've just uploaded an illustrated tutorial and 2 tgd's at the NWDA store for a modest sum. http://store.nwdanet.com/terragen2store/6-terragen-2-presets/23-water.html (http://store.nwdanet.com/terragen2store/6-terragen-2-presets/23-water.html)
It's a completely new method, and has some interesting advantages, as well as some limitations. Here are two sample images of the tgd's to wet your appetites ;)
Thanks Ulco, your tutorial and .tgds are a must for learning the process. You might also consider another for your roads, railroad; and, for the tire tracks and foot prints.
I'll be heading over to NWDA later today. These latest images are super!
The quest goes on, other method again....
I just ordered your files from NWDA; and must say, this is an exciting couple of files. Now, I'm trying to figure out how to generate a clip file where I can join it with another terrain.
Thanks, Bob. Matching it with another terrain will be a little difficult I think, as the warping of the seas also affects the coastline (if you have version II). You'd best build up the coastal terrain from a certain height from the basic terrain. There are small glitches anyway; as shown in this slightly adapted 'Dunes Water II'. The wave height needs to be controlled or you'll have to find some good seeds in the 'all waves node' (which you can test by attaching it to the testwarper, near the lake object node) and I'm looking for a better way to get the breaker foam to really bubble (here it does bubble in the distant too high waves, but not nearby). I did add another small scale warper to the 'onshore foam irregulator', which yields nice results in the foam line on the shore. Never mind the shiners in the water, I forgot to delete a second sun right ahead.
And the debris lines are best controlled by height instead of the basic warper, I now realize.
Anyway, for anyone interested to have a go at this 'exciting couple of files': http://store.nwdanet.com/terragen2store/6-terragen-2-presets/23-water.html (http://store.nwdanet.com/terragen2store/6-terragen-2-presets/23-water.html)
Jon (Hetzen) has sent me a blue node wave file to work on, which might be the final breakthrough in waves, but there's much that needs to be done to that. It is bloody complicated.
Quote from: jo on April 27, 2011, 08:34:21 AM
Hi Dune,
That's some really cool stuff you've been doing, very impressive :-).
Just to be a pain, waves are often considered to be trochoidal in shape rather than sine:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/waves/watwav2.html
My intention for implementing 3D waves was to do it using a trochoidal wave. One criticism of your waves is they look a little thick and lumpy near the shore. The characteristics of trochoidal waves might give a bit better look.
Not getting down on what you've been doing, just suggesting an avenue to explore to make it even better :-).
Regards,
Jo
I can implement a "Curtate Cycloid", see picture.
This curve have the parameter formulas:
X = AW - Bcos(W)
Y = A - Bsin(W)
X x-axis
Y amplitude
A Ocean Depth
B Max deviation for A (B < A)
Thanks, Mogn. But math isn't my strongest point. I think Jon would better understand this. The only thing I can say at this point is that I just 'studied' waves in Portugal (nice and warm), and noticed that they aren't really following strict sinusoid (or whatever) distribution. They come and go and fase eachother out or strengthen eachother, small waves and larger, etc. For a natural look, the coastal waves shouldn't be very strictly regulated, I suppose.
Quote from: Dune on June 04, 2011, 02:44:01 AM
Thanks, Bob. Matching it with another terrain will be a little difficult I think, as the warping of the seas also affects the coastline (if you have version II). You'd best build up the coastal terrain from a certain height from the basic terrain. There are small glitches anyway; as shown in this slightly adapted 'Dunes Water II'. The wave height needs to be controlled or you'll have to find some good seeds in the 'all waves node' (which you can test by attaching it to the testwarper, near the lake object node) and I'm looking for a better way to get the breaker foam to really bubble (here it does bubble in the distant too high waves, but not nearby). I did add another small scale warper to the 'onshore foam irregulator', which yields nice results in the foam line on the shore. Never mind the shiners in the water, I forgot to delete a second sun right ahead.
And the debris lines are best controlled by height instead of the basic warper, I now realize.
Anyway, for anyone interested to have a go at this 'exciting couple of files': http://store.nwdanet.com/terragen2store/6-terragen-2-presets/23-water.html (http://store.nwdanet.com/terragen2store/6-terragen-2-presets/23-water.html)
Jon (Hetzen) has sent me a blue node wave file to work on, which might be the final breakthrough in waves, but there's much that needs to be done to that. It is bloody complicated.
Thank you Ulco, in any event, this will be a great experimenting file. As time goes on, I'm sure we'll see some new ideas. I'll continue to work with it and hopefully come up with something unique.
Bob
Quote from: Dune on June 04, 2011, 02:44:01 AM
Jon (Hetzen) has sent me a blue node wave file to work on, which might be the final breakthrough in waves, but there's much that needs to be done to that. It is bloody complicated.
Was that last image using that function set Ulco? There's some rogue peaks in that. I'll have another crack at it tomorrow, and set up some control masks for you to have a play at texturing.
@Mogn. I'd like to play a little more with an approach I have, which uses fractals to define it's randomness. This already allows me to split the wave at it's peak, so that I can define it's front and back, and shape it accordingly as it approaches the shore. I think I can also make it curl too.
My math is somewhat lost in the last 20 years, but your degree to vector direction, that you mentioned in another thread, has been very useful in something else I had a play with the other day. I managed to get a colour space object to twist towards the centre, be that a PF or Bitmap. It has 'fold back' limitations, but is quite animateable. The Arctan2 node was the star in the end. You could use it to create hurricaines or galaxies, without having to mask a non twisted colour space.
No, it's the 'old' set of files I have at NWDA, with a set of warped stretched PF's for waves. I've changed it from displacement by a displacement shader to displacement from within the PF, which gives more control over peaks.
I have been distracted (and on vacation) lately, so didn't have much time to really dive into your blue nodes. An update would be very welcome though!
This is better than many wave renders I have seen that were done in other apps.
excellent waves, love the shoreline also...brilliant imho!
excellent. i really like the different part of the sand too !
Splendid waves! I wonder how they look animated!
This is a (rough and dirty, and far from perfect) result of our combined set of files, Jon. Mine and your blue nodes, slightly adapted. It's hard to comprehend from the blue nodes that you can set the number of waves by changing color of a PF and the amount of warp by changing the scales. Fascinating. It's great that your nodes easily fit in my method of 'coast-following'. I'll work on this again, as there's much to improve. I was hoping to get a mixed number of waves, blended by a PF, to 'irregulate' the even lines, and I've got a few ideas.
Following this thread is very interesting watching it develop. Looking forward.
Looks awesome Ulco :)
Personally I'd reduce the number of waves to 2 or 3 as it seems the sea is becoming deep pretty quick.
Secondly, I think beyond the 3rd wave the blending with the water shader is not ideal anymore.
Quote from: Dune on June 07, 2011, 02:17:46 AM
This is a (rough and dirty, and far from perfect) result of our combined set of files, Jon. Mine and your blue nodes, slightly adapted. It's hard to comprehend from the blue nodes that you can set the number of waves by changing color of a PF and the amount of warp by changing the scales. Fascinating. It's great that your nodes easily fit in my method of 'coast-following'. I'll work on this again, as there's much to improve. I was hoping to get a mixed number of waves, blended by a PF, to 'irregulate' the even lines, and I've got a few ideas.
Good start Ulco. I didn't get a chance to continue with this on Sunday, as I found that my files were at work.
I want to create some more control gradients to temper what the wave does at what part of the beach altitude. I also want to explore some of the PF implications we've used as the waves animate.
I'm also thinking we'll need to find a way of creating a gentler beach slope. I have a few ideas on how to do that, which I hope we can aply to any terrain with a set sea level. Maybe use the slope of the beach to determine how many waves there are.
It might also be usefull to get a wave direction multiplier in there to somewhat influence the concentricness of the waves, by giving them some user set slant. But I think that'll come later down the line.
Also, I need to get the wave to follow up the terrain as the energy disipates, then washes back. Again I've kind of plotted that out already.
The linear step node is a serious help with all this. Thanks again Matt.
Perhaps a gray scale color gradient would work for adjusting the beach slope. It could be adjusted by stretching the image size.
The last render is really quite wild. Great work guys!
I'm again working on my own set, the one I sent you to start with, Jon. I reworked it so it makes a gradient from wide and low to narrow and higher at the shore. It seems to work nicely, but I'm at a loss where to include all your extra nodes regarding wave shape front and back and so on. Starting a new render now.... finished. The waves obviously need to be broken up more, and the shape is not quite right, possibly due to the twist and shear shader settings. More work to do.
Reduced the number of waves and the amount of twist/shear. Never mind the horrible dry land.
The waves are looking good. The land portion is not too bad. It can be worked on once the waves are the way you want them.
This a test with Jon's file again. I (procedurally) masked out some areas behind the breakers to get remnants of breaker foam (like in real life). But the regularity of the lines still bothers me. Back to work.
Man, You are one busy person! :o 8)
Well, business is kind of slow, so plenty of time to experiment. Hopefully someone will come up with a nice commission again...
I guess it depends on the vantage point. I'd say in image 3 and 3A the waves look impressively natural, I don't see much regularity there. It'll be harder from the bird eye view (camera high above ground) it seems.
Great job on this for sure! I just want to walk the beach now, especially on a Monday :)
I love the waves. I don't suppose these are possible using the standard water shaders? I have played around with some of the seetings to produce the effect of local effects such as wind etc and the results are pleasing, but haven't yet tackled waves. Stunning with the vegetation though! Jonathan