tsunami

[guismo]

Well, this is the result of the thread I started on focused critique.

There are many problems, but I can't spend any more time on these. I may finish the whole sequence with the meteor, but I don't think I will simulate or render anything else on the wave. Maybe in the future I could try again.


It was mostly done on cycles. If the compositor had frame blending and post motion blur like reel smart, I would not even need after effects. I worked much faster and better in the compositor then in after.

Here is the kind of wip thread. http://blenderartists.org/forum/show...a-4-months-WIP

If anyone have any questions or suggestion for future projects, they are welcome. I may try something like that again in the future, if I can do it in way less time.


EDIT:
Since some people asked, I created some videos trying to explain the file.

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/simulations/tsunami/
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ih1s42gbq0aky60/tuto.zip

This is not quality material, though it gave me a lot of difficulties to create. Still... I hope it can be useful for someone. Many problems happened trying to create the videos and some of them might still be out of sync or have video problems. If you see them, tell me. Besides that, it was my first spoken tutorial and it may be hard to understand and follow. Sorry for all the mistakes I made.

There are still a lot of things I would need to cover. If anyone wants more information, like the compositor, for instance, just tell me and I will see what I can do.

LAYERS AND ORGANIZATION
How the layers are organized and where everything is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oddsVmyfiS4&hd=1

THE MASK MODIFIER
This part is the simplest, about the mask modifier, why it is important in this file and how to use it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjcK-rYROGQ&hd=1

UV PROJECT MODIFIER
This part is about the uv project modifer and uv project order. Why I used it and why object mapping or uv map would not work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUkxxqpo3bc&hd=1

VERTEX WEIGHT PROXIMITY
Painting the deformation influences dynamically. Why I use 0.6 as weight and about the vertex groups
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iz7Kemxhq8&hd=1

WAVE RIG
This part is about the rig I created. The motion of the bridge and camera, the use of lattices universally, bend modifier, drivers used to control and the height of the wave influencing the bending.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7GyqPY_WZQ&hd=1

COLLISION DETECTION
How I created the detection of the collisions. Why dynamic paint would not work, nor would animated textures. How I used remesh modifier and textures to create the detection. Why blender particles sux.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgjW0MOalg4&hd=1

DUPLICATING THE WAVE
How to pass the changes from the main wave to its copies. An intro to suffering and despair.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meWJ5MVbLv0&hd=1

PARTICLE RENDERING
The alpha from the wave and bridge, holdout shader, how to save the files and use a big number of particles. Why not to use disk cache. Use of seeds for multiple renders.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wctGUHnZ4ic&hd=1

THE WAVE SHADER
Here I show the use of ray length with gradient, emission shader to understand the textures and uv project.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HzD-akUFVI&hd=1

[Jonathan L]

Wow, this turned out really well. Great job!

[BlenderMagician]

Wow, that looks great. It lacks some realism on the simulation side, however the materials look superb.

[guismo]

Thanks Jonathan!

BlenderMagician,
Yes, it lacks. Many things contributed to that. I also spent too much time on the materials and making many mistakes. It really did not turn out like I wanted. But... I learned stuff. That's more important, I guess.

[mslarsen]

How did you make that wave? It is incredible and the most amazing thing I've seen since Tears of Steel.

P.S. Some people have made a lot of money from tutorials...
P.S.S The compositor does have a method for post motion blur in cycles. It's the same method Andrew used for volumetric lighting in his logo animation tutorial.

-Thanks

[guismo]

How did you make that wave? It is incredible and the most amazing thing I've seen since Tears of Steel.

P.S. Some people have made a lot of money from tutorials...
P.S.S The compositor does have a method for post motion blur in cycles. It's the same method Andrew used for volumetric lighting in his logo animation tutorial.

-Thanks

As some people are showing interest on how to use the file, I will try to make it more friendly and explain how it works.

I don´t know what andrew uses because I don´t see his tutorials. I don´t really like his attitude. But the only way I know of doing composited motion blur in blender is using a vector pass. That is very good, but kind of impossible with this amount of particles.

It is kind of possible. I did some tests where I could kind of make it work. But it was not worthy the trouble when reelsmart does it automatically and usually better then blender composited motion blur.

[dConclusionman]

Wow! Man, that is incredible!
A wave like that is one of the most difficult effect to achieve in the CG world. I tried to make something like that in the past and failed. I read somewhere that artists in Surf Up treated every wave in the movie like they treated any other characters with keyframes. However, when i searched for tutorials over the internet, i couldn't find one. Not even a tutorial with commercial 3d apps!!! And you get a pretty decent result there! Congratulations, sir! Hats off.

As some people are showing interest on how to use the file, I will try to make it more friendly and explain how it works.

Yes, please ! I'm sure it'll be useful. Meanwhile, I'll read your WIP thread to see more in depth when i get the time. Thanks for sharing.

[blenderjourney]

Seriously, that wave is amazing. I'd definitely pay for a tutorial on how to do it. I've been wanting to create a wave for a long time and basically gave up the idea of doing it in Blender. I figured I'd have to use realflow to create something fairly realistic. But THIS... gives me hope again.

[Kramon]

Definitly this work have to get future on all sites about blender!

[Marbury Media]

I love the progress you have made on this. I was following your other thread. Thanks for the effort you put into this project.

[Bernardo]

grats that is a really good work! I agree that something could be better, but what you did is not an easy task at all, and overall the thing works!

+1 for more info!

[guismo]

Sorry for not answering and thanks everyone! I kind of needed that.

@dConclusionman

In the wip thread you will see examples of how other people did their waves. I have the ebook from sony pictures, if you want...

@blenderjourney
I am honestly happy if that serves as an incentive for you. If you need some help, just tell me. I am creating a kind of tutorial for the file I am going to upload. That may help.

And thanks everyone.
I have been trying to create a video explaining my workflow and how to navigate the file of the wave. I am not sure anyone will be able to use it, but hopefully it may save some time from the errors I had.

[Pivac]

Amazing Glad to see something like this can be done with Blender. Would be cool to see the bridge getting destroyed as the wave hits it.

[Piet]

realy realy realy awesome man! Thank you ! I do some 3d since for a couple of years and was testing a lot of things like that.. but this one breaks everything i tried and saw until now... and done in blender... lots of respect!! stunning and realy happy to see your work!

[Paint Guy]

This look great. I do think the still looks better but the water does look quite realistic. Of course a wave of that size would demolish the bridge in the process so if the bridge collapsed it would look way better but it still holds up as a fun looking simulation.

[aaron2]

It is incredible....I want to know how you make waves looks so natural?? it will be great if you let me know about the effects used as i am making a project on cyclones

[tondiar]

I have to agree with the others: Great work! Thanks for sharing

[guismo]

Guys!
Since some people asked, I created some videos trying to explain the file.
Here is the file on dropbox. I will upload it to blendswap as well
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ih1s42gbq0aky60/tuto.zip

This is not quality material, though it gave me a lot of difficulties to create. Still... I hope it can be useful for someone. Many problems happened trying to create the videos and some of them might still be out of sync or have video problems. If you see them, tell me. Besides that, it was my first spoken tutorial and it may be hard to understand and follow. Sorry for all the mistakes I made.

There are still a lot of things I would need to cover. If anyone wants more information, like the compositor, for instance, just tell me and I will see what I can do.

LAYERS AND ORGANIZATION
How the layers are organized and where everything is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oddsVmyfiS4&hd=1

THE MASK MODIFIER
This part is the simplest, about the mask modifier, why it is important in this file and how to use it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjcK-rYROGQ&hd=1

UV PROJECT MODIFIER
This part is about the uv project modifer and uv project order. Why I used it and why object mapping or uv map would not work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUkxxqpo3bc&hd=1

VERTEX WEIGHT PROXIMITY
Painting the deformation influences dynamically. Why I use 0.6 as weight and about the vertex groups
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iz7Kemxhq8&hd=1

WAVE RIG
This part is about the rig I created. The motion of the bridge and camera, the use of lattices universally, bend modifier, drivers used to control and the height of the wave influencing the bending.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7GyqPY_WZQ&hd=1

COLLISION DETECTION
How I created the detection of the collisions. Why dynamic paint would not work, nor would animated textures. How I used remesh modifier and textures to create the detection. Why blender particles sux.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgjW0MOalg4&hd=1

DUPLICATING THE WAVE
How to pass the changes from the main wave to its copies. An intro to suffering and despair.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meWJ5MVbLv0&hd=1

PARTICLE RENDERING
The alpha from the wave and bridge, holdout shader, how to save the files and use a big number of particles. Why not to use disk cache. Use of seeds for multiple renders.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wctGUHnZ4ic&hd=1

THE WAVE SHADER
Here I show the use of ray length with gradient, emission shader to understand the textures and uv project.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HzD-akUFVI&hd=1

[blenderjourney]

honestly, this should be featured on most blender sites. i simply haven't seen anyone create a wave that is even close to this realistic. it might not be perfect, but it is far beyond anything else that people have done in blender with breaking waves.

i just can't get over what a great job this is. i'm stoked to look through your files!!

edit - oh my. i didn't realize it was an animation I was only looking at it as a still. Sure, the animation has some places it could be improved, but you could probably spend the next two years refining it. Great job!!

[guismo]

Thanks a lot blenderjourney.

I hope the file may be of help to you.

But ow... I would not spend anymore time in this wave. Maybe some day I would try to remake it, if I knew I could do better. But for now I will wait for someone to show me a better way of doing it. The way I did it was just too much work.