Maya Ocean System - Waves Part 2

The next step on creating a more chaotic ocean was to use some interesting graphical interfaces I have yet to see in Maya.

These were interesting interfaces to work with, and rather confusing as to what they did, a lot of experimentation was needed to see what each setting applied to.

Firstly I'll talk about my understanding of the Wave Height, it's main function didn't seem to manipulate the height of waves. It seemed to have more of a focus on changing the level of detail of waves at particular heights.

The graphical interface allowed for a great amount of control of which type of wave was the most detailed and therefore would be most visible in the final product. I chose a balanced approach, while having the longer waves more prominent which gave the waves a more stormy appearance.

The wave turbulence increased the randomness of the waves, and the rendering times of the scene. Again the fine control over the modification was interesting though I don't feel that they are all that necessary, for the most part I worked with extremes to make sure the ocean was as stormy as possible.

Wave Peaking controlled the level of detail over the crests of each wave, adding to the detail of each crest was a very tentative process with extreme results at low values. I used this effect to add detail to the smaller waves, to balance out the amount of attention paid to the larger waves.