I was wondering if people are using the newfangled(V7) metawater & water editor. It was one of the main reasons I got the upgrade, sounded so exciting. I like the sea and the prospect of making good seascapes sounded great. But I find it didnt live up to expectation. I dont want to moan here, I'm trying to see if I can suggest improved ways to achieve some aspects and whether people would find a use for my suggestions. At this stage I'm only talking about the coast foam aspect. At the moment foam is generated based on 'distance to object below'.  This doesnt always give me satisfactory results becuase : -You need to rely on the terrain itself. Currently you either see the abrupt square edges (or any edges if minimum of terrain was clipped in the terrain editor) or you need to have the ground plane(with same material assigned to it) touching the terrain which may not be OK for other areas of the image - hard to have foam near steep cliffs - the edge of the foam where the water intersects the terrain is always very sharp and completely covered in foam(because that's where the distance to object below is the smallest). I think there should be more variations. - I find it hard to chose the right 'typical depth', but that may just be my incompetence. I always felt the need for a method that depends on the position of the coast line itself regardless of the terrain underwater, seems more intuitive and hopefully easier practically. So, I have a method to do coast foam which does not rely on the distance to the object below. It makes use of the hightfiled of the terrain, which at the moment needs manual manipulation in program like photoshop/gimp etc to produce a mask. (Not complicated, my knowledge of 2d programs is very minimal). The mask is then incorporated in a modified meta-water node, and Bob's your uncle! Attached is my first more or less successfull result. It still needs improving but you can get the general idea. Of course it could be that this is obvious/trivial to anyone else, or noone else is that offended by the coasts not looking right:) In that case I'll just use my method myself. Otherwise I'll make a little tutorial and provide the metanode. At some future point, if I didnt get bored, I may automate it using python so one doesnt need to craete the mask manually in Photoshop.

Oh - I should point out that you can still use the water editor to control the waves and foam on the waves.

Disclaimer: I'm not always very relyable, so dont be disappointed if I abondon this project in the middle, it all depends on life the universe and everything:)

Your solution sounds promising. I am always interested on new functions. Please make a tutorial for this. My workaround for this problem with steep objects is to place a object bellow the see level and make it invisible from render. In my example the sphere creates the foam.

Mazak

Yes, it would be nice if Vue had an object intersection node which could calculate the the intersection profile of 2 objects which in turn could be used to drive the foam,  Usually I add another fractal node in combination with the distance to object below node in order to make the foam less uniform.   The other possibility with Vue 7.4/7.5 is to paint the foam edge in the Terrain Editor - kinda like your Photoshop technique Art Pearl.

Nice concept. And as shown in the reply by "Mazak",  the "foam attractor object" can be any object, not just a terrain, as many believe, I think. I use the same method as "Mazak", e.g creating the wake around/behind a boat: you turn the boat 180 degr. make it larger, and flatter and invisble, positioning it so it gives the desired effect.

I'll post another screendump next.

• Lars "bigbraader"

 -continued :)

Oh goodie! responses and hints - great! Unfortunately I have a meeting with some alpacas in the Rockies today:)

My suggestion isnt a true intersection, it's based on a iso-height line. Not too difficult.
If I had access to vue source it would barely be a page of programing, without it there is some overhead.
Oh dear - gotta run, see ya later

Alpacas :blink: ?

Mazak

A tutorial would be great, Artpearl. Thank you.

> Quote - [ Alpacas](http://images.google.com/images?pws=0&q=alpacas&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=mdxhStCiCp3umgPt67H4Dw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1) :blink: ? > > Mazak

Nothing to do with vue:) Girls day out for us, a group of women who knit(&crocher) for charity to an Alpaca farm in Granby Colorado. They have been importing these weird looking animals from south America and they raise them for their wool. Saw them in their grazing fileds and the mill where the wool is processed. Very soft wool but a bit pricy.
These are some of the pictures I took - they can look very awkward and very graceful.
Sorry about the digression:)

That`s an interesting thread. Just learned some new things. Thanks for the infos.
Yes, ArtPearl, a tutorial would be nice.

I`m not very happy with the Water editor either, at least not with the way the coastal areas are treated.

Tried a couple of things myself (still experimenting).

Below is a picture with some custom foam and an attempt to create coastal waves. Ok, not the ultimate waves (for example too uniform) but maybe a step in the right direction
The waves are created by using a sine filter which is driven by the "Distance to Object below" input node.

 

Ok, a tutorial is on its way, I had to learn how to do a couple of things in gimp (or PS) which I knew existed but I never used them.  It might still take me a few days to 'weave' it in other life things that need doing.But at least I know it all works.
I should have called the thread 'additional ' rather than 'alternative' way, as I'm not saying you cant achieve good things without it, just another tool in the toolbox. Up to now I also used the method of duplicating my terrain making it bigger in the horizontal directions and flatter in the vertical, or adding extra islands/rocks and making them invisible. It works but I found it a bit fiddly.
Bigbraader - I like your foam. The only thing I dont like is the fact that at the intersection with the coast it is a pure white line because the distance to object below is exactly 0, and its a bit tricky to get rid of that even if you combine it with other noises. (only the 'multiply' mode of the combiner can do it, if the ranges of numbers are right).
Sorry, probably will be clearer when I finish the tut.
Oh - its going to be an old fashioned one, words&pictures, not a video.
eonite - oh yes, another 'why didnt I think about it' about using the sine filter... very promising!

Progress! The tutorial is done and will be hosted by gekatplay shortly. I think I got a bit carried away and it is no longer a 'little' tutorial:) . It has all the necessary instructions for creating a mask in a 2d image editing program and how to set up a simple scene and implement the material. (a mat file will be available for free too). I explain the new meta node in details, but if you arnt technically inclined and just want to use it, you can skip that part:). As an appetiser, here's the material in the function editor, that's all that's needed for applying it. The meta node is in the next post.

...the meta-node. The central idea is that you need to something like a boolean intersection between the coast line mask and the foam pattern so that only bits that are opaque in both will be retained. To achieve that the values of the two need to be mapped into an appropriate value range, multiplied, and mapped back into a standard transparency map range... More in the tutorial. By the way, I forgot to comment on Dave's suggestion above that the mask can be done using the paint material tool in v7.4/v7.5. To a certain degree that's true, but I think this tool is still in its infancy and not flexible enough to generate a nice mask. I didnt just paint the mask with a brush (although that was my first experiment). In fact I didnt use a brush/pencil at all.  I used tools like select by color, grow selection, color fill, and gaussian blur so that there is actually a distance (to shore) dependence. I expect vue's painting will evolve in the future, and it will be really nice to be able to do it all in one application.

Thanks for all the work you are doing on this.

Thank you Paula! I find that one of the best ways to understand something is by trying to explain it to others. If I cant explain it - I probably dint understand it properly:)
 I dont want to push the good people at geekatplay to hurry up and post the tutorial, I'm sure they have things to do. But I thought it will be nice if it's available if people want to look at it in the weekend so I uploaded it  to 'yousendit.com'  meanwhile.
The link is
https://rcpt.yousendit.com/717790282/92b6c141aef699e79eb9e09c57692bec
It will only be there for a week, but hopefully by then it will be on G@P.
The zip file contains the tutorial in a pdf file as well as an html file with the associated jpg files for the illustrations. I think the quality of the illustrations is better in the html version, however Icreated it using OpenOffice on a mac so I cant garrantee it works on PCs.
There is also a material (.mat) file you can use if you want to try out the method.
Let me know if you have problems/questions/suggestion. This is my first tutorial, I'm still learning:)

Attached Link: Coast Line Foam

Ah! my tutorial is now on geekatplay!

I hope it's helpful. Let me know if you have questions.

There was supposed to be a free .mat file to go with the tut, which I cant see (yet), so if you want to try it out, I attached the zipped file here. Download, rename it so it doesnt have the '.txt' extension and unzip it.

...and something completely OT:
may I appologize to all those I've upset last year. It is is the Jewish 'Yom Kippur' (atonement day) tomorrow. I'm nor religious, but it's a good tradition to ask for forgivness from anyone I hurt, at least once a year.

Maybe next year I'll be less annoying?

Mmm, good stuff! :)

I jsut use an item hidden form render, below, (usually a direct copy of the terrain, (flalttened, so cliffs aren't an issue) but Eonites sine eay, so you get regualr spaced waves, kewl! :)

thanks ArtPearl!
and yer forgiven ;) Scots would need a day for forgiviness every weekened, at least! :p

Silverblade - with respect to regular waves following the coastline - I got the attached image by adding a quick filter (just added 3 dips to the default straight line filter) between the coastline mask and the map filter. Would need a bit of refining, but seems to work.

Is this what you wanted?

The thing is  the waves generated by the Vue's water editor dont look consistent, being all parallel rather than follow the coastline.  (That's true in general, not only for my examples).
I imagine I should be able to modify the waves too using a coast line mask techniques...