Reno used the Ocean Shader in Maya to create the ocean for our first scene when we were doing the initial motion path for the camera before the first render test.
Above image is the comparison between various set of ocean attributes, which was rendered out before we place the ocean into our scene.
Above images are renders from the ocean as Reno was tweaking the ocean shader attributes before we put it into our scene.
Although we can easily determine many attributes like the colour, reflectivity and the size of waves for example, but it was very difficult to see how the ocean waves animate with only renders of one or two frames.
As a result, once we feel that we have most of ocean attributes set closely to how we would want it, we immediately imported it to our scene and carried on with further adjustments with other elements in the scene. However, we were still tweaking the ocean along with other elements in the scene in order to match them up together and create a good overall look. The render time does increased significantly with other scene elements though, so we had to keep the render quality settings at a minimum level as we were making the fine adjustments.
With the first render test, we had a better understanding of how the ocean would work in the scene, but it was still very difficult to determine the wave size and its animation by having to wait for the renders from the renderfarm.
This first render test does however give us a better understanding of the overall look. As a result, we decided to change the colour of the sea in order it to fit better with our theme of decay, as well as the overall colour scheme.
Maya Foam Emission
Emit Particles with Ocean Shader
With our previous tests and knowledge, we have realised that the sea does not react with the seaforts so Reno and I spent a lot of time researching into this trying to figure out a method of doing it. All the results lead to scripting like the links above for example. Although the scripts are provided from various websites, most of them only work for scenes at a smaller scale. As soon as we enlarge the particle containers or the particle system, the script would stop working. With lack of knowledge with scripting it was extremely difficult to approach this subject and make it work for us. After an entire weekend of researching and frustration, we decided to leave this for later when we have extra time. On top of that, the result of particles that actually work in the small scenes that were used in the examples did not seem to be particularly impressive anyways with this level of time consumption.
When I was lighting up the scene, we faced a strange artifact of weird shadow patches being generated everywhere on the ocean. We thought it was due to the point light, so I changed it to a directional light instead. As a result, the shadow patches have reduced but still persists throughout the sea. After a series of tests, we discovered that it was due to Reno's change of ocean attributes which increased the size of the waves to a scale so large that they started generating over-intensified shadows. Also due to the quality of the render, the shadows seemed really two dimensional therefore we could not tell that it was generated by the waves.
However, the ocean shader contains a heavy amount of texture, combining with Global Illumination and Final Gathering, the rendering time became extremely expensive, even with the renderfarm. The above image took about four to six hours to render on the renderfarm. As a result, we will have to take off the Final Gathering and perhaps even the Global Illunimation concerning on the amount of time we had before the deadline.
Above image is the comparison between various set of ocean attributes, which was rendered out before we place the ocean into our scene.
Above images are renders from the ocean as Reno was tweaking the ocean shader attributes before we put it into our scene.
Although we can easily determine many attributes like the colour, reflectivity and the size of waves for example, but it was very difficult to see how the ocean waves animate with only renders of one or two frames.
As a result, Reno did a render test on his laptop to see the animation. This test also determines that if the ocean will react with other objects in the scene (Supporting structures of the seaforts).
As a result, once we feel that we have most of ocean attributes set closely to how we would want it, we immediately imported it to our scene and carried on with further adjustments with other elements in the scene. However, we were still tweaking the ocean along with other elements in the scene in order to match them up together and create a good overall look. The render time does increased significantly with other scene elements though, so we had to keep the render quality settings at a minimum level as we were making the fine adjustments.
With the first render test, we had a better understanding of how the ocean would work in the scene, but it was still very difficult to determine the wave size and its animation by having to wait for the renders from the renderfarm.
This first render test does however give us a better understanding of the overall look. As a result, we decided to change the colour of the sea in order it to fit better with our theme of decay, as well as the overall colour scheme.
Maya Foam Emission
Emit Particles with Ocean Shader
With our previous tests and knowledge, we have realised that the sea does not react with the seaforts so Reno and I spent a lot of time researching into this trying to figure out a method of doing it. All the results lead to scripting like the links above for example. Although the scripts are provided from various websites, most of them only work for scenes at a smaller scale. As soon as we enlarge the particle containers or the particle system, the script would stop working. With lack of knowledge with scripting it was extremely difficult to approach this subject and make it work for us. After an entire weekend of researching and frustration, we decided to leave this for later when we have extra time. On top of that, the result of particles that actually work in the small scenes that were used in the examples did not seem to be particularly impressive anyways with this level of time consumption.
When I was lighting up the scene, we faced a strange artifact of weird shadow patches being generated everywhere on the ocean. We thought it was due to the point light, so I changed it to a directional light instead. As a result, the shadow patches have reduced but still persists throughout the sea. After a series of tests, we discovered that it was due to Reno's change of ocean attributes which increased the size of the waves to a scale so large that they started generating over-intensified shadows. Also due to the quality of the render, the shadows seemed really two dimensional therefore we could not tell that it was generated by the waves.
Above image is the final look for our scene.
After the second render test, we felt the colour was a bit too unnatural after the previous adjustment. Also we a few higher quality render of HDRI lighting and global illumination, it seems that the reflection of the light from the sky would give the ocean a nice looking colour scheme already.
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