Ocean Integration Questions

[GlennimusPrime]

I've done a couple of extended ocean shots in the past, but never integrated into real footage. Just wanted to hear some thoughts from FX people who have worked through this type of shot before. Would love to find some more info and hear ideas about this type of real world integration.

The shot in question is a close to the water low angle shot with a large CG ship, kicking up whitewater from the bow and leaving a wake behind as if moves through a real filmed ocean. I would call the ocean quite windy with medium sized waves with some white caps. I wouldn't call the shot largely stormy, but stormy enough for a grey sky windy day. Waves possibly around the 1 - 1.5m height range.

The problematic areas that stand out to me so far would be matching the guided ocean spectrum to the same speed and movement of the real world waves. I would expect to see the bow splashes, tail wake and whitewater to move around closely to match the real world waves in shot.

Am I thinking about this correctly? Would something like this be possible to match the real world underlying waves a tall? Or would something like this normally be done by replacing the entire foreground of water in shot as to not have to worry about this type of integration? I mainly ask, as this is more of an exercise in ocean integration into real world footage.

Would love to hear thoughts from anyone who has built a similar type of shot before.

Some images representing the type of ocean and camera angle:

 

- Glenn

[HM_2020]

Most productions would probably say its easier to just replace the entire ocean as much as possible with a very tight matte around the real and TIP your compers

 

 

[GlennimusPrime]

Thanks for your thoughts @HM_2020 It's the real waves in the foreground that will help sell this as believable too. I think I will first try to track a rough camera move to match the horizon, and then build an ocean spectrum that follows as close as I can make to the real waves - This part seems the most difficult to me! Next I guess would be this tight as possible matte to blend the flip into the real waves.

Would love to hear more ideas on this too, if anyone has tackled anything similar to this type of real world integration.

Thanks!