First off, thanks to Dune and Nikita for offering up their wave generation mechanisms in the NWDA store. Both were well worth the few dollars I spent to purchase them.
I combined Dune's zoned-beach approach with Nikita's sin generated shore-facing waves. Then I wrote a set of animating parameters for both and purged the stuff I didn't need. I consider this piece to contain an equal amount of effort between the three of us. This is the very first test render I completed last night. Yes, there are some timing issues. Yes, there are lots of things to work on. As a proof-of-concept, though, I'd say it just works.
The waves are entirely procedural. Their frequency, height, speed, forward "crashing", and distance from shore that they start can all be controlled somewhat independently. The waves follow the shoreline in a damped fashion. The damping amount is also controllable, in addition to how parallel the wave line is to the shore. I found the damping was necessary due to the fact that waves don't cling perfectly to the shape of the shore. They are influenced by the decreasing height of the sea floor beneath them, so I had to tone down the shoreline effect.
The next steps are to vary the breaker line subtly over distance to make it more irregular (should be easy). Then make the foam movement more apparent, also easy. Then experiment with adding more foam displacement. Then see if I can do anything about keeping some foam on shore at the high point of the breakers. I may just make that static. Then add some of dandelO's awesome caustics (animated, of course). After that, I'll drop my objects into the scene and send it back to the farm.
So, is this the first animated shore waves in TG2? No one else seems to have done it here on the forums.
Vimeo link:
http://vimeo.com/36070296 (http://vimeo.com/36070296)
Very good indeed, looking forward to a finished piece :)
You may well be the first
Cheers
Richard
Super-cool, Digitalis! Looks great indeed. 8)
über-cool.
I'm really curious to see the result with a large scale view.
Anyway you did a great job, i don't know if this is the first animate shore made with Terragen, but i'm pretty sure this is the best result yet.
good job
looking really good...well done!
Looks good :)
Very impressive result! Obviously the speed needs adjusting, but this is an excellent start. Can't wait to see how this evolves. Maybe you'll have your own item in the NWDA library soon. ;D
- Oshyan
Very cool! I'm impressed and realize just how much I don't know.....
Thanks guys! V2 is up and ready for critique. Still more things to do.
http://vimeo.com/36177765 (http://vimeo.com/36177765)
Very impressive, Ty! You've pushed this quite a way ahead. Perhaps you should eliminate the row of rocks I put out there. I think, instead, it's very possible to put some large rocks close to shore and have the foam play around it. You just need to relocate the 'row of rock' mask, and blend that simple shape by a fractal.
Man! You're nailing it in this thread! Killer!
I agree about removing those rocks, they look unnatural in an otherwise fantastic scene. Keep going! :)
Thanks guys. Yeah, my wife actually made a similar comment about the rocks. I was leaving them there in hopes I could reduce the waves between them and the shore as well as bend them around the ends. More of a math challenge than anything else. They don't look very natural in the scene from a realism point of view, though. I'm not sure that have a few rocks on shore would work, either. Perhaps if they were much more scattered and flattened? Oh well, I'll mess with it.
My current problem is that I have my farm working on another project that probably won't be done for another week or two. The only machine I'm throwing at rendering this is my workstation, which is now taking 3 hours to kick out 128 frames of the V2 product at the "quick render" res. The 1280x720 finals are taking about 45-90 minutes depending on how much water is in the frame. It sure would be nice to be able to rent a bunch of core i7 machines for a few weeks.
This is very good but I have a suggestion. You've captured the lateral motion fairly well but the retreat seems to happen too fast. I wonder if you could increase the time between the waves without slowing down the advance towards the shore, so that there is more time for the retreat. Not exactly sure how you'd do that but I hope you get the general idea.
I think this is more important for the parts of the water that don't quite reach the shore, rather than the water advancing up the beach.
Matt
oh my !!!
that is already good looking !
congratulations for this job
wow! some impressive stuff here
its great, looking forward to seeing later improvements
Quote from: Matt on February 04, 2012, 05:15:30 PM
This is very good but I have a suggestion. You've captured the lateral motion fairly well but the retreat seems to happen too fast. I wonder if you could increase the time between the waves without slowing down the advance towards the shore, so that there is more time for the retreat. Not exactly sure how you'd do that but I hope you get the general idea.
I think this is more important for the parts of the water that don't quite reach the shore, rather than the water advancing up the beach.
Matt
I actually can do that pretty easily, I think. I'll have a go at it.
This is looking really good.
Ah the amount of times I've wondered if this effect was possible.
Excellent! Will be keeping an eye on this.