Hey guys,

Recently, I've been doing a lot of work for Baird and Associates...and now they have a huge project for me. An animation for a $1.2 billion dollar project and they want a nice animation.

I've done animations for them before, but this one they want the 'wow' factor. One of the things they wanted added was nice boat wakes...or at least somewhat convincing ones. Now, bear in mind that the water will not be just a plane...I'll be using an open ocean node...nothing too crazy in wave size, but it IS the ocean.

Any ideas/tutorials on how to accomplish the following?

1. Nice boat wake.

2. Water that changes color near shore (ala...turns white...'distance to object below?'...I lost that tutorial...but I think this application could work)

3. Waves with water caps...aka the white color peak of a wave (could I maybe use an invisible plane obove the open ocean terrain with a similar function to 'distance to object below'?

4.  Animated caustics for underwater.  Part of the animation is above water...looking at a port....but for a 5 second amount of time we dip below water level to look at the breakwater.  I'd like caustics to show here.  I'll likely turn the spotlight with the caustic gel on just before hitting water level and then turn it off right after emerging again.

Any help is greatly appreciated. I basically have the weekend to figure these 4 things out. Again, ANY direction would be appreciated. I really want to wow these guys.

Animated caustics:

How does one accomplish animated caustics? I downloaded a caustic tutorial done by Peggy Walters that uses a bitmap caustic for a still...and it can output a sequence of images...but how would one go about animating this. Should I just load the sequence and let her rip? How would one control the speed of the caustics?

Ocean waves and caps:

I purchased Phillipe Boyer's 'The Island' animation...I'll likely just hack out that ocean texture and functions so no worries here now. Amazing water btw.

Attached Link: http://www.lysator.liu.se/~kand/caustics/

Animated caustics:  Check this link. Creates caustics patterns that can be animated. Use them as a light gel for a spotlight, or as a mixing function for mixed ground materials.

Quote - Animated caustics:  Check this link. Creates caustics patterns that can be animated. Use them as a light gel for a spotlight, or as a mixing function for mixed ground materials.

I'm actually using that now.  Got a sequence rendered out, it's nice and sharp.  I wasn't a fan of Vue's procedural caustic gel.  I'll have a short video of what I've done posted soon for CC.

Mainly, I'm just looking for a boat wake now as the texture I'm grabbing from 'The Island' should suffice for the wave caps  and shoreline (hopefully)...we'll see when I plug them in.

The boat wake geometry doesn't really have to be animated...maybe just some sort of mesh with an animated texture.  We won't be that up close so it just has to look like a boat wake.  Maybe I can put some invisible dummy objects attached to my boats so that Vue reads it and turns it to the foamy texture in open ocean...

More to come...in the meantime, let me know if any of you guys have any ideas for the boat wake.

www.envision-graphics.net/video/underwater_caustics.avi

^^  There are what I intend to use for underwater caustics...ignore the fish  :)  Just wanted to add something to break up the monotony of my tests.  It's encoded in DivX 6...only 800k

CC requested on it.  The horizon line you see will be hidden by a plane in the distance...I'm not using volumetric atmos due to the fact I'll only be underwater for a short amount of time.

• x-Open Ocean - check
• x-Shore Action - check
• x-Underwater Caustics - check
• Boat Wake - still to do

I must say I'm a tad concerned as it's been asked before if boat wakes can be done and other than in stills, I haven't seen any good solutions yet.

And who knows how all this will behave once the geometry is added.  Like I said, this is a WIP.

I don't know if this will be any help or not but I've had some success making boat wakes using that 'distance to object below' node. Since you already have it applied to the water, it should be easy to place a wake shaped object just below the water plane behind the boat. If it's close enough to the surface it should activate that surf effect. I've not messed with animation but it seems to me that if you have animation applied to the water plane, it would affect the wake as well. 

Just a thought....

M

Here's a quick sample of the effect...even though you guys probably know this one... this is a stretched out sphere primitive just below the surface of the water plane with 'distance to object below' node and SeaVue mat for the white stuff. 

I thought also...what if I brought it up a bit and made it invisible. Well lo and behold it's the Philidelphia Experiment with the wake running around the edge of the object lol.......

Here's another quickie with a boat this time. What I like about this method is that there is no geometry on the surface of the water to worry about and the wake can be easily adjusted by tilting or raising and lowering the hidden geometry below the water plane.  Here again, it's just a stretched out Vue sphere.

Thanks for lookin'

M

Excellent.  Thanks for that.

Hey Ryan,

I'm curious...how did that work out?   

M

Well, it will work out fine I think.  Client wanted to wait for moving boats for the next animation...this is sort of just a preview for them.  There was an issue with the distance to object below material because an important scene was to see the rocks under the water...and the texture was preventing that because it turned white.  So I couldn't use that for this animation....but the next one where we go underwater, I will.  Thanks!

I'll post more once I get it

Can I ask you how did you get an animated foam on shore, please? Or maybe post a water mat here.... I was looking for this for some month but never find. It would be just wonderfull if you describe the process of creating such motion in two world. Thank you!

PS. I'm really sorry for my poor English.