Some water testing, once again

Started by Dune, September 24, 2019, 07:40:01 AM

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Dune

I was hoping to find a way to get foam to slowly fade after a wave has had its highest point and broken into foam, so it wasn't locked to (masked by) the tops only so to speak. But my brain is not sufficient :P

Hannes

Looks already cool! A bit slow I'd say. And it's indeed a challenge to make the foam fade out slowly behind the wave.

Dune

Yeah, maybe slow, but the waves are pretty big, which is not obvious because I left out the lighthouse. Rocky island is about 20m or so.
And I deliberately put the foam where the waves break, so slightly in front of where the 'overhangs' occur. Foam that stays behind, kind of trailing back would be great, but I doubt if it's doable.

Dune

Tried another one.

David

Hi Dune, Please would you consider posting your scene. I'm still struggling to understand the placement of foam on water, whether it is assigned by height or masked in some way. My trireme is ready to have some foam around the oars and bow wake (which I've displaced with an image map), but I've been unable to find any guidance on the concept and workflow. Is there any way to use a separate image map to position the foam? Thanks, David

Dune

What you could do to get exact placement of foam is set your boat with oars at 0/0/0, make a topdown or ortho render (or even a screenshot with the boat shaded or as wireframe) and paint in the foamy areas in photoshop in a layer over that render. Then save the layer as greyscale tif and import in TG, just like you did with the bow wave map. See if it fits, or change size so it fits. Keep image map at 0/0/0 and use a transform shader after it, copy final location and rotation of the trireme into the transform shader, and it should fit again.
In the line of shaders to the lake/water sphere (whatever you use), make a surface shader after the water shader, and mask by this foam image map. Now it should have white areas where they should be. You can further break the image map up, or additionally mask, by a fractal.

I hope this will help you.

WAS

You could even do an ortho render with couple painted shader spots exactly where you want foam stuff, and than in Photoshop you have a guide of exact positioning.

David

Thank you both so much, image attached! This is just a 1st look before I get going properly with the actual trireme wake proper. Can't tell you the thrill it gave me to see that this is actually going to be possible! Thanks again!

Wake test 001.jpg

james adamson

Those waves look amazing Dune!
 
Every few days I see something new that the experienced Terragen artist can produce.
Endless possibilities it seems.
So is the main movement of the water a few fractals moving acrosss one another? 
And is the foam the same principle but made white smaller and placement/height controlled with colour adjust or somesuch method?
Lovely stuff.

james adamson

Or is the foam generated at an intersection of existing fractals?

Dune

Yes, one fractal moved by animated transform shader over X (or Z), and a lesser movement over Y. You could use a mix of movements for more comlex wave movement. The foam can be altitude restricted (in surface shader, or by distribution shader mask), and further broken up or masked by a small fractal (I usually use voronoi ridges for simple foam, but more complex setups can be useful, say for tiny bubbles, etc).
You can also use a convert displacement to scalar from the waves and color adjust (see white and black points as altitudes) until you have the wave tops, masking a foam surface shader.