Holey moley!! Them's some high seas!! Well, with that degree of roughness, you should see some white caps and spray. I was going to say that the sky should be stormier, but you could have waves that high with just high winds, so that's really ok. I've seen it like that out at sea. Did you say you do those with slick rock???

Yep, Slick Rock.

Most excellent terrain waves. 8) Who says that Bryce is just for landscapes when you can get results like this. For white tops to the waves you could try duplicating the wave terrain and making it higher so that only the tips show above and give it a white/blue colored texture, with transparency. Although I'm sure there are a couple of water textures that would do the trick. Maybe you could have the biggest whale ever jumping out of the water, and maybe some volumeric clouds to give the sky more depth, or you could just ignore me 'cos this is fantastic as it is. 8) Catlin

Really nice high seas, but they sorta look like jello, ricky's correct, white caps, spray and foam webbing would all be present with seas this rough, and the lighting would be stormier. If the winds are that high to make that kind of wave, it's a storm front.....

Eh, it can happen here with severe Santa Ana winds and no storm front at all. It just blows like all heck for a few days. But, I'll admit, a stormier sky would add to the drama.

Not sure if this is what you're after, but some crew members on the boat would be sweet. Apart from that, not much to add that hasn't been said above.

Fantastic pic, but I have to agree that you need somebody on board.

Now maybe the occupants of the vessel have been washed overboard when the last big wave hit. 8) There you go, have a few men in the water fighting to get back to the boat. 8) Catlin

Then we'd need a shark :)

possibly you could duplicate the terrain using a cloud mat, then raise it ever so slightly to get those whitecaps?

So far, I've not had much luck getting white caps/foam that integrates well with the water texture (which I like), so I may have to add it in post after I find a suitable ocean pic to use for reference. I also intend to add a couple of poser people to the sailboat. As far as the rough water/unstormy sky goes, I was thinking that the sailors had gotten further from shore than they had planned. I've seen oceans this rough with a clear blue sky, so it happens. Thanks for the comments!

Oh yeah you can have sunshine overhead and 20 foot swells no problem.

Catlin: Why should it be MEN fighting to get back into the boat? Why can't it be women......or Mothers-in-law? Flak: Did you know that bite-for-bite a Barracuda is worse than a Shark. You see, a shark will bite a nice lump out of a guy....sorry...woman,....but a baracuda will hang on there and pull huge strips of flesh from wherever it hits. Definately needs a few white-caps. But this is a really great sea! Certainly comparable to Zhann's challenge winner a few months ago.

Tjohn, great scene! You can have high seas with no white caps at all just as you can have low seas with many white caps since this is often dependant on whether there is wind and wind speed. You can have foul weather conditions out far to sea but bringing in large swells closer to land. I have been out at sea when weather conditions can change in a matter of minutes. It all makes for a more dramatic scene if that is what youre looking for. TheBryster, in some parts of the world the Barracuda is more feared than sharks. You see, sharks have rows of serrated, jagged teeth and their mouths are low on the body forcing them to chomp down with their strong upper jaws then shake their heads from side to side tearing and pulling off large chunks of flesh leaving a large gapping jagged wound. Whereas, barracudas have razor sharp teeth all in a row, in a mouth that runs the length of their heads, which comprise about 1/3 their body size. Theyre bodies are streamlined and dynamically designed making them one of the fastest explosive swimmers in the sea. Their bite is considered surgical in nature leaving clean cutes taking whole appendages in one fell swoop. Ive had my finger slit from the teeth of a baby barracuda. Ive also been surrounded by curious barracudas, one taking a bite out of my scuba fin (most un-nerving), as we were @125 feet from our ship on a nighttime scuba dive out in the Florida Keys. Not fun when its pitch dark, except for our lights beams, and they come right up in your face as they size you up with those large, emotionless mechanical looking eyes.

Quest: I know, I'vebeen to those parts of the world. But I think you may have it back to front....I've always thought that the Barracuda did the the stripping of flesh thing, whereas the shark takes out a solid lump.....

A shark only needs to take out one lump.

Yes, and the one lump being your entire mid section. 8)

Hi I think I used the same waves (duplicated) but moved th cliping bracket up then ofset it (up or forward a little) and textured it with a cloud tex. just some thoughts. Another one some of the latest research into sharks suggests that most shark attacks are due to the shark being curious about the victim , basically he would like to find out whats this dark shape is (one reason why totaly black/dark wetsuits are not a good idea) the unfortunate part is sharks don't have hand so use their teeth. So causing damage to the 'victim' I actualy think that animals are more intelligent that we 'superior' humans give credit for. Dave

Btw before I got carried away I was refering to the pic in my gallery 'stormy seas' not a plug lol. Dave

Oh sure Bryster, I'm sure that if the barracuda's bite caught you at some other angle other than perpendicular, I have no doubt that a swimmer's trashing will most definitely cause the flesh to strip away between its razor sharp teeth. But I've personally seen barracuda slice fairly large fish clean in half with one bite and watched the upper part of the prey try to swim away without the lower half. It has always been believed that sharks don't specifically single out human cuisine and as has been pointed out, sharks pretty much use their teeth like dogs use their nose, or infants use their mouth in the early years of development and unfortunately for the human victim, once the shark decides that the human is not their favorite food, extensive damages are often the results. But, we're getting away from the thread again...very interesting stuff nevertheless. Sorry tjohn, didn't mean to highjack your thread.

No prob, Quest, the original purpose of the thread has pretty much run its course, and as a holder of a B.S. in Biology, I was finding the shark/barracuda discussions interesting.

OK TJohn, what's your take on this.... Quest....LOL I've personally seen barracuda circling boats I've been helping load with passengers for a trip ashore from a cruise ship......................the words 'Be afraid, be very afraid' ringing in my ears. I've also come within biting distance of a sand shark and a hammer-head.......sticks his tongue out in a gesture of na-na-nana-na ;-)

LOL...these were only but a few of my stories. I've got some others that would make your spine tingle a bit. I dived for many years and seen my fair share of sights. I took a semester of scuba diving as a physical education course in college many years ago and with that came underwater physics, dive tables, dangerous marine biology, search and rescue, first aid, CPR, underwater navigation, beach entries, boat entries and the U.S. Naval Diving Guide. I became diving certified through 2 world organizations and liked it so much I signed up for the advance scuba diving course a second semester and became certified as an advanced diver. I've logged hundreds of underwater hours and got more stories to tell. ;p

Quest: Yeh! But can you actually swim?......:-)

ROFL! We were required to swim a minimum of 1/4 mile without any gear. 1/2 mile on the surface fully geared, which adds about an additional 100 pounds on the swimmer. We were also required to ditch and don, where all your gear is left at the bottom and you must retrieve and put on all your gear, clear your dive mask and restore breathing before surfacing. We were also trained to rescue ourselves when getting caught in rip tides where a rip tide can drag you out to sea for about 1/2 mile and you must swim to shore by first recognizing the rip tide then swimming along with it at a 45 angle towards the shoreline. Scuba diving was only 20 years old when I took my first college semester of diving. Buoyancy compensators didnt exist then until about 1 years later. We used an orally inflatable air bladder where you needed to remove your regulators mouthpiece and blow the air directly into the bladder through a one-way valve. There were no aluminum scuba tanks all were made of steel, which weighed about 75 pounds when full. You had no choice of wet suit colors, everything was black and most good wet suits were custom made to order. We adhered strictly to the U.S. Navy Diving Manual standards and therefore needed to be in top physical shape to meet its requirements since they were developed for the military. There was no civilian counterpart like there is today for the diving tables. The closest thing that came to a diving computer was your oil filled wrist navigational compass and your underwater dive watch. The general rule was that the less moving parts, the better, since with less moving parts you had less opportunity for anything to go wrong (keep it simple stupid). The simplest piece of diving gear was your snorkel with absolutely no moving parts in it. Dive safety has always been the biggest issue so if you couldnt swim the bare minimum of mile you simply were not allowed to dive, much less become a certified diver. The first 2 months of our training was nothing but swimming. We werent allowed to don a dive mask until we passed the preliminary swimming requirements. If you didnt meet that requirement you where pulled from the course. The college would not leave itself open for a possible lawsuit and strictly enforced the then accepted standards of the certifying world organizations. About 3 years later, U.S. Divers began the first ever insurance company to cover divers and diving facilities. Living in N.Y.C. then, you could count the number of dive shops comfortably on one hand and still have a couple fingers left over. Today certified diving has become a lucrative financial endeavor and divers are pumped out by the busloads in less than a weeks time with little or no regard for diver safety or a participants swimming ability. God forbid that their diving gear should fail.

Quest: Puts hands up in gesture of surrender I didn't learn to swim until I was 19. I had ear problems and operations that meant (way back then) I wasn't allowed to enter the water in case I drowned because water would flood my ears and drain into the back of my throat. Eventually while at sea (British Merchant Navy) the guys discovered that I couldn't swim....oh joy! I was suddenly dragged from the crew bar, up to the deck and thrown fully clothed into the swimming pool, which thank God was full! This practise continued for a week, by the end of which #1 I didn't have a dry piece of kit and #2 I could indeed swim! 2 weeks later I was swimming with the rest of them in the eastern Med while the ship was at anchor, guarded by a guy on the bridge-wing who was armed with a .303 in case of sharks........which brings us nicely back to where we started..........!

LOL...now that's what I call a crash course!