white water + flip meshing questions

[illuminix]

Hi everyone, recently picked up HOUDINI, coming from 3ds max.  loving HOUDINI and its workflow!

been doing some experiment with white water + flip, and had a few questions.

the scene is based on the whitewater shelf tool.  i have been tweaking the settings to get more detail and a more realistic look.  the scene is rendered with redshift, with some basic shaders, so please excuse the rough render.

attached a short test render for reference.

Q1, FLIP MESHING thickness? blobbiness.

the FLIP particle looks good, but when i mesh them, feels like i am "loosing" quite a bit of particle details and the mesh always looks bit blobby and thick.  i have tried adjusting [particle separation] parameter down to 0.1 to get more "detail" into the simulation itself, and it helps.  however, still feel like the water feels too blobby, as shown below.  is the only way to get the thinner flip mesh to go with add more particles? 

i had tried reducing @pscale and [droplet scale], which does produce "thinner" looking fluid, is this the right workflow?  but once this parameter is tweaked with, the White water particles (more information below) seems to "float" above the water mesh.

also tried adjusting [influence scale], reducing it seems to retain more "detail" on the fluid surface, but noisier, is the default value a good value at production?

 

Q2 WHITE WATER particles floating on top of fluid Mesh.

the white water particles seems to be floating above the mesh water line,  i am assuming its because white water is calculated based on the FLIP particles, not mesh.  
where meshing seems to change in its volume based on filtering and other settings.  is there any way of marrying them better?

 

Q3 BEST METHOD RENDERING WHITE WATER with REDSHIFT

I am currently rendering WHITE WATER as simple particles with motion blur.  was wondering if this is best practice to render white water with redshift?

for example, is it advisable to separate the WHITE WATER as a separate pass? and comp them in post?

 

and any other general TIPS and feedback is appreciated.

apologize regarding the long post, and thank you in advance for any suggestions!

have a great day all!

 

 

waveBB.mp4

[illuminix]

update on more testing.

tried playing around with [isovalue] which seems to "offset" the overall Mesh inward or outwared.  i have used value of -0.1 which seemed to help mesh look "thinner" especially at the beach side.

is this good method of getting "thinner" flip mesh? other than lowering particle separation further?

 

i am still getting the "floating white water" issue.  which i guess is expected since [isovalue] literally offsets the mesh surface inwards.  where as white water is calculated from the VDB of the FLIP particles?

i think i should be expecting some floating white water, as my understanding of white water is that it includes bubbles (under water), foam (water surface) and mist (above water).

but watching the rendered frames closely, i get the feeling that the foam layer is floating above the water layer. 

 

any tips and suggestions are much appreciated.

[ThePyroism]

You are getting "floating_white_water" feeling because of the container boundary, I checked .mp4 your water mesh should be more high-res. You can also use peak node after water mesh to get rid of blobby and thick water edges. 

 

I hope this helps 

S