Project Review

I am a bit disappointed in the final product and I hope I have time over the next few weeks to continue to add small features to it, it took a surprising amount of time to complete, due to testing and rendering. And I use that as a learning experience for future projects using Maya.

The problem hit me like a brick, my Maya file opened this morning revealing all the textures had disappeared, the models did not show up in renders and because of the water Maya decided to divide by zero a couple of hundred times. Not much time till hand in and a lot of other coursework to hand in. I'm a bit devastated to say the least.

Wakes & TouchUps

The other objects in the scene which are merely stationary objects could also use wakes so that they have more presence in the scene. For the rest of the month I'm going to be working on group project, but when I get time I intend to add extras such as sea spray in the form of an nParticle emitter at the tail end of the boat, possibly change the boat model so that it has a canvas sail that can be replaced with nCloth to illustrate the direction of the wind.

Boats & Functionality Part 2

Another feature of using the motor boat is the ability to set the pitch sending the prow of the boat up in the air as it accelerates. I has been quite fun to experiment with. So the final step of this part is to create the wake for the boat object.

This is done through the use of the create function in fluid dynamics, the wake emitter was not as impressive as the other features set with the ocean function. The emitter has two functions to provide a ripple effect and to create sea foam / spray, these effects are extremely unresponsive and need to be overloaded to give off even a slight response.

One interesting aspect is the use of textures for this functionality, the wake emitters need to be held within an area otherwise the geometry will not be altered.

Boats & Functionality

The next step was to create a boat which act as a moving object through the scene, creating a wake as it passed. At this point I went on the free 3D models .com to get some sample models to use in the demonstration.

http://thefree3dmodels.com/

I collected a small sample of models to use as debris and a single boat object, I would have liked to have had a more populated scene but I did not want the polygon count to increase too drastically and impact the rendering process.

Using the motor boat function results in much like any other locator, allowing for the control over buoyancy and pitch and roll, but with the added features of a "motor" acting as thrust and a rudder which acts to set a general heading. This proves a somewhat entertaining device as it acts as importune animation control.

Floating Objects

The next stage was to include floating objects such as debris, in the scene. This needed to be done to give the scene some depth as just watching the waves would be incredibly dull. Floating objects are also handled within the ocean system with a variety of locators.

At first I used the basic locator, the "Surface Locator" which used a simple expression to keep an object above the water line, this however is not enough as there is no movement to the object, other than in the y axis. The object also needed to realistically roll with the waves and that meant that the use of a more complex locator.

I started testing the dynamic locator, to see what kind of functionality it contained. The dynamic locators used a slightly more detailed expression and instead of following the height of the waves, this locator allowed objects this functionality but with an add bobbing motion.

The dynamic locator has a lot of extra attributes which allowed me to test out the buoyancy effect. The buoyancy of the object, is determined by it's height and buoyancy variables. This result was much better than the simple locator but could still be improved.

The best way to have floating object within the simulation is to use the boat locator, which allows object's to pitch and roll with the waves, with this the debris in the scene became highly realistic. One problem they face was the speed of which they moved, I solved this problem by increasing the air damping on the locator object, this in effect made the area above the waves react with more friction slowing the bobbing motion to a more manageable rate.

Maya Ocean System - Waves Part 3 (Foam & Misc)

I continued to work on the waves with the ocean shader functionality, adding in foam and some lighting for added detail in the scene.

For the foam I played around with the foam emission and threshold values to add a much desired sense of realism to the lack-luster waves, using this system didn't give as interesting results as the use of a particle system however it saved greatly on rendering times.

The foam texture is layered onto the wave geometry where there is a height difference between two points i.e. the crest and the trough. I made sure that the foam content was high to further illustrate the raging sea.

I used the common material attributes sparingly, the only features used was the overall colour of the ocean and the intensity of the trough shadow to show off highlighted areas in the scene, the crest and troughs of the waves.

I finally used the specular lighting function in combination with a directional light to add more detail to the water.

Waves Testing Results

I have been working over the weekend testing out the wave effects in Maya's ocean system, these are a comparison from the basic ocean to the stormy effect I have managed to get in the last few days.