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| STEP
1 - CREATING THE WATER TERRAIN... |
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Create
you first terrain, this will be your water so name it 'waterterrain1'
or something similar this is important to do. Give it a large
resolution in the terrain editor, I used 1024x1024...and smooth,
smooth, smooth, also make sure your terrain is not 'solid',
I explain why later...
Adjust the height of the terrain map down so that it looks
like rolling waves, rather than a mountain of water....
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| STEP
2 - APPLING THE SEAWATER MATERIALS |
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Now
go to the materials lab and from the 'water and liquids' menu
select 'foamy seawater'. Tweak the color so that it is more
towards the green cast.
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| STEP
3 - DUPLICATION AND ORGANIZATION |
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Duplicating
the Terrain to create the foam. By stacking layers of cloud
terrains on top of the water terrains, you can create the
illusion of foaming water. Duplicate the first terrain, name
it 'foamterrain1'. Make it slightly taller than the original,
and slightly lower down so that the peaks we will create show
through the original.
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| STEP
4 - CREATING THE FOAM EFFECT |
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NEXT,go
to the materials lab and change the 'foam' terrain's material
to a cloud preset, I used marbled clouds, you can use weekend
clouds or something fluffy and white, but make sure it's somewhat
dense.
By adding lots and lots of 'basic noise' to the terrain and
then cropping the bottom of the terrain until only the noisy
peaks of terrain remain you create your 'foam'.To add noise,
go to the terrain editor, I used a lower resolution on the
foam terrain because it gave a more irregular pattern when
the noise was added. You can experiment with this to get the
'look' you're after. This is still a little spikey so smooth
as needed, remember to crop the bottom of the terrain, and
your 'foam terrain' should look something like this...
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| STEP
5 - POSITIONING YOUR SEA |
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Now
you have your water and foam time to postion them to look
the way you want. Drop the foam down into the water, so as
little, or as much, showsfor the foamy water look, tweak the
foam some if you need to. Select both the water and the foam
terrains, group them, name the group the same as the terrain.
This will help you keep track of what's where, should they
become ungrouped, you'll know which two go together. I also
saved them to my object preset library. I did about three
different ones and saved them so I'd save time, when I needed
a wave....make some smaller ones with the foam shifted to
one edge of the water terrain and group, and a few small ones
of just the 'foam' to scatter where needed. We will need them
when we assemble the scene. And you get roughly the above
pictured effect...
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| STEP
6 - ASSEMBLING THE SCENE |
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Background
waves...Start a new scene, select your sky, this sets your
mood. I used one that was similar in feel to the one in the
finished image. Place your rocks, shoreline, building, whatever
you had in mind for the waves to break upon. Give the ground
plane the water material you're using for the waves, this
disguises any spaces that may appear between terrains. Start
in the background and work forward, placing a large terrain
as the background water, depending on your image, this is
not absolutely neccessary, however my image required it.
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| STEP
7 - ASSEMBLING THE SCENE CONT... |
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Middle
ground waves...As you place your water-foam terrains tilt
them slightly to form troughs between the wave swells...In
the middle ground I needed the bubbly effect of water over
hidden rocks and so that terrain was left more bumpy. Below
I have added additional terrains, as I move to the foreground
of the scene.
Note: on a larger scale, they could be radicaly titlted, in
keeping with the scope of hurricanes (just make the ships
tiny).
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| STEP
8 - FOREGROUND WAVES, CRASHING SURF AND LIGHTING |
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Work
forward placing terrains until you're ready to place your
breaking waves. Waves crashing on rocks with spray may be
done by placing the small grouped water-foam terrain against
the rocks. Spin the small water-foam terrain around so that
it is concave (the reason for not making the terrains solid),
experiment tilting them against the rocks until you get the
look you want. Mass them for effect if needed...the more you
have, will increase your render time though....
This is when I did my lighting, I have a radial under the
waves near the rocks and one above the waves in the same spot,
I used a pale champagne color and a setting of 15. I know
some do their lighting first, that's okay too, I needed to
know where to highlight, so I waited till the end. Just render,
and postwork any minor flaws in the waves...
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| STEP
9 - ADDITIONAL EFFECTS |
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Additional
effects can be had by shifting and tilting the foam terrain
around on your water terrain, extreme clipping produced a
small enough foam to use as 'blowing foam'. You can also tilt
your water terrain on the x until it's almost vertical, and
then elongate on the y, then tilt it back horizonal again
for wind driven water (which also makes terrific landscape
terrains)....try it out and just have fun...
I hope this was helpful and I wasn't too confusing, this was
harder to do than the sea...Comments and general
confusion,e-mail me, zhannsartwerx@msn.com or zhannsplace@msn.com.
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