Anyone have any idea how to model and/or animate a boat wake?  I'm doing an animation and I'd like to get some nice boat wakes coming out of the back of my boats...

I found one tutorial, but it didn't have as convincing of a shape to the wake as I'd like.

http://sorenworlds.netfirms.com/Wake/wake.htm

Yes, that's a very good approach. With a little care, you can make very realistic wakes that way. I think this because I just spent 40 days at sea, and I shot a lot of photos of ship's wakes and bow waves. Soren's techniques look good to my eye. Just so you know, I will be releasing a set of mesh models for boat bow waves and trailing wakes in about two weeks. I'm working them against my photo sets right now. The first set(s) will be for "boats", rather than for "ships." (To a mariner, a "boat" is smaller than a ship - a "boat" can be put onto a "ship", but not the other way around.) Anyhow, bow waves and wakes for smaller vessels first, and then if anyone wants them, for larger ships. But, for large ships, Soren's technique is best, at least in my opinion. Just as Monsoon's ocean techniques are best for most things that are not in relative close-up view.

Ryan, I do not know of any way of animating a ship's wake in Vue. I can generate a set of sequential meshes for bow waves and for wakes. For Lightwave, MAX, MAYA and Cinema4D, I can create the particle files that do this for these programs. But to do this on an "ocean mesh," you must have a program capable of deforming that mesh in real-time. (At least, to my knowledge.) Some 3D apps allow this (MAX and MAYA leap to mind), and some "fake it" by allowing for textures to be animated or even 'deformed'. But the only possible way that you could do this in Vue might be to start with a rough-surfaced cylinder or maybe a terrain that has been bunched tightly together, and then try "animating" the Vue material that is applied to it. I believe this is theoretically possible in V5I, either directly, or via a Phython script. I know that V5I allows for scripting a material. Would take a lot of experimentation, tho'. We are more likely to have some of the "deformation" material tools you would need in Vue 6, as I understand it. But we don't really know yet, do we? How critical is this to you? If it were really, really critical, I can generate a sequential set of meshes for you, that can be used for individual frames in an animation. But this means rendering those frames one at a time and stacking them together. I've done this quite a bit myself, but its too time-consuming to be worthwhile for hobby purposes.

It's not THAT critical.  I'll experiment and see what I can come up with. Thx tho.

Whew!