Attached Link: http://hellborn.scorpionshops.com/

Please not that the server will be down for some upgrades the morning of friday 22.

For one thing it loaded with the blue and red basic materials, which I guessed were to create two different material effects. But when I loaded in Tropical Water, it overwrote both color materials- but leaves the second as some kind of artifact. Since rendering with Tropical Water was so slow, I rendered this picture with "Clay" (which was still very slow) and also shows the artifact (what IS that?)

I think the "rounding" of the waves is a nice idea, and I would like to try out making the waves more like "peaks" instead of wave "sets" (meaning- directional waves driven by wind or tide.) But since I scale out your model to look like an ocean, the other features are hard to utilize and get visual feedback.

So basically- I would suggest simplifying it back again with only Primary wave controls (and not secondary wave controls).

By making more options inside the function that can be controlled by the Constant values makes it more easy to explain what each settings do with in turn makes it more easy for a non expert to play with it. The price to pay for this is more calculations. Maybe it is better to make a faster function that needs more knowhow to control and instead save out the function with preset values for those that wont understand it. The red and blue material is really only there as I'm currently working on getting foam placed in the correct places and the red blue material is there to make it easy to se if it lines up correctly. The artifact is a strange thing. When i did some renders myself trying out differntsettings I suddenly got an artifact as yours. Well, then going back to the previous settings should remove it...NOT. Whatever I did the artifact stayed. Surly this must be a bug or something making the function and/or terrain hang or something. Then I did remember that clicking the reset but in the material editor have fixed some strange 'hanging' before and it olso fixed it this time. So as a first solution I suggest you try that. I have made some test with waves that have more correct shapes (not the same in front and back). This can be pretty easy done using sawtooth function (where a filter places medium grey at the tops)but the problem doing it that way is that it generates a continius wave and I have not figured out how to solve this in a way that looks god. The other way would mean to in some way use orientation or some othe useful input parameter but so far I have not managed to figure out how to use it and how it works in a procedural terrain as the real geometry aktually is flat. Unless orientation is calculated after the terrain height has been calculated, but if so then how could I use the orientation to change the height if it allready has to be calculated...? Trying to figure that one out is about the same as trying to answer the question: What came first. The hen or the egg? If it's possible to apply procedural materials to a sphere (makin a planet maybe) then orientation in the terrain procedural would make more sense but as far I know this is not possible (maybe it will be in Vue5 Pro?). Secondary wave controlls is allready in the old material but you have to do it using the fractal settings rather than using the constant value controls. So I dont really think it's moving the value settings from the fractal/etc to an external control but rather the possibility to somewhat control the shape and the combiners needed for this that increases the calculations. So it's really about answering the question. What's most important, renderspeed, possibilities, ease of use? Let me know what you think.

from my point of view, possibilites and ease of use, if i need better renderspeed ill just slap on one more computer rendering it :) then again, renderspeed is crucial aswell, but rendering an entire ocean of water will never render quick, so i would go for possibilites and letting the end user finetune it and hopefully get a better looking water.

Hellborn, Some second thoughts... I rotated the huge ocean terrain I made by 180 degrees, and then saved it. The rotation has effectively hidden the strange ridge or bump that shows up- only on one end. Coming back later and trying a new render test, I was surprised to find that it rendered much faster- just about like the first terrain you made. So I have concluded that Vue 5 has an "adjustable" way of dealing with these new terrains. So- by saving and then re-opening them it seems they work fine and render just about as fast. This same thing seems to happen when you first try to render them- Vue 5 reports like 9 hours, then 5, then the time rapidly drops down to just minutes. So the software is very ADJUSTABLE once it has made its own internal calculations. I guess I'm still getting used to this effect. It shows that you cannot trust the initial render estimate times- and just have to wait about 60 seconds to see the real render calculations begin...

And again for anyone else trying this- if you scale out a HUGE ocean terrain like I did- SAVE IT, maybe even QUIT Vue 5, then restart and reload the Procedural Terrain again. This seems to apply newly adjusted memory allocations and the model will now render much faster than the first time...

Veritas777: As pressing the resetbutton removed the artifact in my case it seems to be something going wrong somewere in the calculations when several recalculations has been done or something. Could it be that the slow renderspeed was had any connection to calculations at the same time as the artifact appeared.

Also, how does the default size (width/length) of the primary waves work. I think they are a bit smaller than in the old one. Should I make them larger?

Attached Link: http://www.boatsafe.com/nauticalknowhow/waves.htm

Attached Link: http://www.nextlimit.com/

Message edited on: 10/23/2004 07:30