[clay]

I'm creating a scene of stormy weather in 3D max (with the ocean, the rocks, and a lighthouse, etc)and could not find any tutorial on creating a really stormy water surface ( most of them are calm water surface, oceans under normal condition). I guess I'll try using particle system, some animation and render the whole scene with motion blur option on.

The effect that I'm concerned with is the foamy appearance when the water hits the rocks.

Let me know your input.

[waylon]

Wow, that's a really tough one. Is this going to be a still frame, or an animation? One of my co-workers wrote a lightwave plugin called NatureFX, which has been used in some fairly big movies. What they did was to film real waves crashing, and merge those with the swells that NatureFX created. Not elegant by any means, but probably the best bet under the circumstances.

So yeah. If big film productions studios can't get it to look good purely with software, you may have to do it as a post-process effect (like in photoshop.) But then again, if you're just doing a still shot, you may have better luck with particle systems, or simply with some really strange geometry and good materials.

[BlackPool]

I would suggest trying something like making a seperate object for the foam area and apply a texture to it. Also create a transparency map that makes the object invisible wherever the negative values are in your image/proceedural foam image. (if your animating) I would parent the texture image to a controler object and use that to animate your foam. Also I would morf the object a couple of different ways so that the foam won't look the same when it crashes up on the beach each time. I never tried anything like this myself, but this is what I would try first.

[Jezebel]

Hey, I'm not sure if this helps you or not, but I'm no 3D person so this is the best I can do. I was browsing this site the other day that had an effect like you mentioned. A really cool site for those of you that haven't seen it already:

http://www.rustboy.com/


I seem to recall him describing how he did the water effect. Not a tutorial or anything, just a very general explanation. Maybe watching the movie and reading what he says will help you out? It's under the movies section, I think it's movie 4.

Hope this helps.

Beth

[ May 24, 2001: Message edited by: Jezebel ]

[clay]

Cool ideas!
it's going to be a still frame of the scene, showing good color scheme, lighting and semi-complex modeling and effects,

yeah, photoshop is a good thing, cause I'm going to make this scene a semi realistic environment, I'm not planning to make it look too real, unless it works(i'll try both versions)

I've started building the lighthouse and going to build the rocks and waters soon this week..
If I could recall...in Titanic, when they show the long shot of the ship, the sea is CGI and I think they made the foam separately and composited it into the scene
but that's too complicated for an amateur like me

...and I've checked the new movie at rustboy.com and found another interesting thing to ponder. This has got nothing to do with my current project. I'm curious, in the 'making of' section, the artist mention about rack -focusing the background in the scene by rendering the foreground and the background as separate layers. If I were to try this, could you put together the two scenes in Premiere? or only 3D programs such as Infini D (used in the movie) could do it?
cause I've only been working more familiarly with 3D max.

By the way
I will keep you all updated with my project and ask for feedback.

[ May 24, 2001: Message edited by: clay ]

[waylon]

Well, it's theoretically very easy to composite two layers that were rendered separately. When you render the foreground, MAX should generate an alpha channel for the image (assuming you save the image in a format that supports alpha channels... TGA, for instance.) That's basically a grayscale version of the image, where white means 100% opaque, and black means 100% transparent.

What you can do then is render your background like normal, put the foreground on a layer on top of it, and make sure the alpha channel is enabled. Depending on what program you're using, there are different ways to do this...

What I would do, in Photoshop, is to first load up the foreground image (the one that should have the alpha channel...) Then load the background and copy-and-paste it onto the foreground image. Then swap the two layers, so the foreground is on top.

Next, go in the "Channels" toolbox, and ctrl-click on the channel labeled "Alpha". That'll give you the selection of all the opaque parts of the foreground. Then, either give the foreground a layer mask, or just invert the selection and hit delete on the foreground layer...

Hmm. I guess I didn't explain that the best, if you aren't already familiar with all those tools. If you need me to go into more detail, let me know.