Erik van der Tier Posted August 15, 2009 Share Posted August 15, 2009 Hi, I've started working yesterday on a wave system ala Surf's Up. It's almost completely procedural. You just pass in a grid size, amount of columns and rows and animate the wave position and the big rollers (see WaveTest2.mov) to animate the breaking of the wave. The only thing that's not totally automatic right now is the generation of the rollers, there are now always 5 of them. I think I'll need to add some Python to make that number flexible as well. The lip-spray currently is based on upwards velocity of the water surface in combination with the height of the surface. I'm not sure if that's the best recipe although it looks fairly ok as it is now. If I wasn't already very happy with Houdini, I am now.. I was able to create this from scratch in about 5 hours As I'm only starting to learn Houdini in ernest I couldn't be happier! Next up: - improve the curves for the deformation - add the settling down of the wave - adding the whitewater where the lip crashes into the water, and the spray that swirls around in the tube. - the probably much harder part.. shading. - After that I might put a surfer on there and work on all the splashes and wake he/she generates. In terms of fun, this is only a little notch below actually surfing yourself Cheers, Erik http://dutcheffectsfactory.com/demoreel/WaveTest1.mov http://dutcheffectsfactory.com/demoreel/WaveTest2.mov Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheUsualAlex Posted August 15, 2009 Share Posted August 15, 2009 Hi Erik. Thanks for sharing. Keep going. As for generating particles off from the crest of the wave, you may consider check the geometry's curvature as well. Given that such wave geometry has a drastic change in curvature, that could be the region to birth particles. Of course, you'll need to make sure you have initial forward velocity as well for your particles. One method we (not Sony, somewhere else) used to do this by creating cross sections of the wave and blend them to create such motion, but from your video, that's a nice approach as well. Cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik van der Tier Posted August 16, 2009 Author Share Posted August 16, 2009 Hi, One method we (not Sony, somewhere else) used to do this by creating cross sections of the wave and blend them to create such motion, but from your video, that's a nice approach as well. I do use blended curves that basically form a cross section of the wave for the deformation. The advantage I see in this approach is that the water surface 'slides' over the waves like in reality. I like the idea of using curvature as well. I'll keep the height in there and possibly add a 'wind' parameter as this kind of spray only forms when the waves are high enough and there is enough weight. Using the curvature instead of the point velocity would solve some issues I currently have with getting the right selection for the particle source. Thanks for the great input! Cheers, Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik van der Tier Posted September 19, 2009 Author Share Posted September 19, 2009 I've started a blog in which I'm posting updates to my project. This way I don't have to post in multiple locations (forums). So if you're interesting I invite you to take a look at: http://dvfx.dutcheffectsfactory.com Cheers, Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik van der Tier Posted September 24, 2009 Author Share Posted September 24, 2009 I got a request for the shader I use for shading the wave surface. So, I've created an OTL from it. In order to use it your surface needs to have a 'zones' attribute (point) that specifies 5 different zones (0-4) on your wave surface. You can then setup the parameters for each zone (the OTL has my current values). This way I cheaply simulate all the complex stuff like translucence without having to do complex shading logic and gives you a lot of creative control over the look of the wave. Cheers, Erik OPZoneBasedWave.otl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Posted September 25, 2009 Share Posted September 25, 2009 I've started a blog in which I'm posting updates to my project. This way I don't have to post in multiple locations (forums). So if you're interesting I invite you to take a look at: http://dvfx.dutcheffectsfactory.com Cheers, Erik Erik, this is great. I was the supervisor in charge of designing the Surf's Up Waves and did a bit of the work myself. It certainly brings me back to see your tests and how well you've replicated the basic design and look, very cool. It looks like you have most of the key concepts working, I'm guessing you've already read our Siggraph presentation, but if not there's a lot of good info in there: http://www.imageworks.com/ipax/docs/Siggraph2007SurfsUpCourseNotes.pdf I wish we were able to build it all in Houdini. Most of it was built into maya with a lot of custom plugins, our waves needed to be animated by animators, not fx artists, at our Layout stage.. long before fx traditionally gets into the mix. D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik van der Tier Posted September 25, 2009 Author Share Posted September 25, 2009 Wow, that's really nice! I do have the paper, which has been a great help and inspiration (the fact that my 3 year old son watches Surf's Up virtually every day helps as well). I love that movie very much myself on many levels. Houdini is being a great environment to build this in. Just a month ago I'd never have dreamed I would be making a system like this. I've updated my blog with an animation test. Now the biggest challenge is going to be the particle systems. But standing on the shoulders of giants it must be endlessly easier to do this, so thanks for all the guys that originally had to come up with all these techniques and for that sigraph paper which was a huge help so far. Cheers, Erik Erik, this is great. I was the supervisor in charge of designing the Surf's Up Waves and did a bit of the work myself. It certainly brings me back to see your tests and how well you've replicated the basic design and look, very cool. It looks like you have most of the key concepts working, I'm guessing you've already read our Siggraph presentation, but if not there's a lot of good info in there: http://www.imageworks.com/ipax/docs/Siggraph2007SurfsUpCourseNotes.pdf I wish we were able to build it all in Houdini. Most of it was built into maya with a lot of custom plugins, our waves needed to be animated by animators, not fx artists, at our Layout stage.. long before fx traditionally gets into the mix. D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik van der Tier Posted September 29, 2009 Author Share Posted September 29, 2009 Posted another update on my blog: http://blog.dutcheffectsfactory.com. This step had some fun with communicating data between displacement shader and surface shader. Cheers, Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik van der Tier Posted October 4, 2009 Author Share Posted October 4, 2009 I've posted another update on the blog, with a completely new sunset backlit look on the wave and a much nicer sky image. Cheers, Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik van der Tier Posted October 9, 2009 Author Share Posted October 9, 2009 I've just posted another update on my blog with the first results of my new lip-spray particle system. Cheers, Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik van der Tier Posted October 13, 2009 Author Share Posted October 13, 2009 New update, multi pass and some fixes... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik van der Tier Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 I've just posted a monster update to my blog (http://blog.dutcheffectsfactory.com) on a new white water shader I wrote from scratch that combines tons of control while keeping data sizes relatively low. Cheers, Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik van der Tier Posted October 21, 2009 Author Share Posted October 21, 2009 Hi, I just posted an update with the first 'whitewater explosion' render. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lisux Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 Is looking good Erik. Looking at your different render passes the one I think needs more work in the diffuse one, I think it needs more subtle details, changing the hue of the surface as seen in natural waves. Also the refraction and better traslucency (SSS will help) will improve the surface shader. Basically for me is too solid. The spray lacks of volume feel, probably more particle.... But the overall thing is looking really well. Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik van der Tier Posted October 28, 2009 Author Share Posted October 28, 2009 Hi, I've posted two updates on my blog: http://blog.dutcheffectsfactory.com. One is a quick update on the progress of the project and the other is about beta testing the tool . Cheers, Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik van der Tier Posted November 9, 2009 Author Share Posted November 9, 2009 Hi, Just posted a new update on my blog: http://blog.dutcheffectsfactory.com. I'm starting to get quite far along on making the wave system a full fledged tool. This post is a first in a series on what the tool looks like and how its used to generate breaking waves. Cheers, Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik van der Tier Posted November 24, 2009 Author Share Posted November 24, 2009 Finally got around to doing some more work on the wave system and posted a new update. Cheers, Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik van der Tier Posted December 7, 2009 Author Share Posted December 7, 2009 Hi, Just posted two new updates on the wave project about wave shading (and some trouble shooting). Cheers, Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik van der Tier Posted December 15, 2009 Author Share Posted December 15, 2009 Hi, In preparation for getting into discussing the displacement part of my wave tool, I first wanted to create a better solution for the basic wave displacements on top of the ocean surface and wave surface. So I turned to Gerstner... http://blog.dutcheffectsfactory.com/?p=253 Cheers, Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kensonuken Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 Hi erik your wave tool is very nice. Is there any possibility to share the tool? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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