Digital Art Zone

Love to see what you could do with rendering a wave by the way.

Sure…..I’ve never done it…..how did you model the wave? I’ve always been attracted to
glass, crystals, fluids, etc in 3D, but haven’t done a wave yet.

I have ZBrush, and it may be the best app for a wave (for me anyway).....I just tried in
Carrara, and it’s just not a good modeler for me.

re: rib problems?....sorry, don’t see any (problems). I know I have a great wave when I
see the stretch marks. =)

megacal - 02 July 2012 12:58 PM

Love to see what you could do with rendering a wave by the way.

Sure…..I’ve never done it…..how did you model the wave? I’ve always been attracted to
glass, crystals, fluids, etc in 3D, but haven’t done a wave yet.

I have ZBrush, and it may be the best app for a wave (for me anyway).....I just tried in
Carrara, and it’s just not a good modeler for me.

re: rib problems?....sorry, don’t see any (problems). I know I have a great wave when I
see the stretch marks. =)

Heh, yes me too,

Oh the wave is easier if you start with a cylinder and delete the ends and some of the verticies, then use the soft select tool and pull it around a bit. The other way is in the spline modelling room. When I used anim8or I used extruded splines because I was trying to animate them and that meant I could have different cross sections (via making morph targets from extruded splines) and still have the same number of vertices.

Except it doesn’t seem to work so well in Carrara because when you translate the spline to a vertex model (The idea is still to make morph targets in the spline room that you can use on a vertex mesh) the vertex mesh ends up with different meshworks of polys (depending on the shape of the original spline) - that don’t translate into morph targets very well. But I’m sure the advantage of a spline room wave is that you could taper the thickness of the wave at the lip - where is if you just add thickness yto a vertex model it is the same thickness added all over the wave (wall and lip) and that needs more work to clear up.

That said you can animate a spline but I have not had much success yet.

I hope that makes sense. Thanks for that Ron Romanovsky link. He is a legend that rocks!

oh here’s a kneeboard I made in Carrara a while ago :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV_FpfbePF4
 

Here some extruded splines animated with anim8or in 2007. Pretty bad but you can see they have potential. All the waves are morph targets. Love those square rails on the board. It was the first thing I ever modelled.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUHIdY-6I0U

Whoa! I like the wave animations…..not hi-res, but I really feel like I’m on the face as it
builds and then tubes….very cool!

Not sure about morph targets, but will look into it. I started with a cylinder in Carrara and sub-divided it
a few times, but the polys are all triangles…...seems like they’d be difficult to work with. (?)

Would like to see your final image for Shannon….whichever pose you choose. Maybe someone
would like to have it on a T-shirt to remember him by.

Yes not high res I thinjk they were 480 pixles and not AA!!
For the cylinder just hit the plus sign about ten times when you first drop it into the vertex room, then with all the polys selected choose MODEL>Smoothe edges
and then over in the right hand box thingy where it says Model select the ” Smooth” button in the subdivsion box and then choose 3 in the render slider (If I slide it to six Carrara crashes.

ah yes I’d like a t shirt when it is done!

Thanks for sharing your method with us! I searched the forums and even Googled, but
couldn’t find a tut on making a building/breaking wave.

Modeling and rendering this kind of wave would be a great challenge…..it is for me!

Think I can “make the drop” now.

megacal - 04 July 2012 01:53 AM

Thanks for sharing your method with us! I searched the forums and even Googled, but
couldn’t find a tut on making a building/breaking wave.

Modeling and rendering this kind of wave would be a great challenge…..it is for me!

Think I can “make the drop” now.

pleasure

I have a feeling you could animate a wave with a magnet but it’s only a hunch
I wonder if you could combine wind physics and other physics to get it to work
maybe in about 2020 when the computers are up to it

you could have a ‘greenback’ moving along suddenly strike a hidden cylinder half it’s height ?

I was experimenting with anythinggoos the other day for feathering the lip and it h as potential but I spent hours doing it and the results weren’t wonderful

it’s probably just better to alpha texture it with painting in Carrara or other

maybe in about 2020 when the computers are up to it

Not now in Carrara, but maybe now in Blender…...have been messing around
with fluid sims, and don’t see why it couldn’t be done.

Don’t want to be heretical, but Blender does incredible fluid sims now…..hope
Carrara will some day soon.

ps- this is a good modeling excercise for me, especially to learn to do some modeling in Carrara.
Don’t know why I’ve resisted it so long…..may even get to like it.

Forget B_____r….....must have been having a boy look.

Hah that’s funny! Blender looks great actually.

If only it didn’t have any interface at all it would be easier to use.

I’ve had three starts on it. Threeis enough because life is too short to learn blender.

As a good exercise the wave is good. Have you done the Joan of Arc tutorial? It’s really good for learning a modelling program.
http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/joanofarc/joanmenu.asp

I did the joan of arc tutorial and the first thing I modelled with what I learnt was a kneeboard

Carrara modelling for me just lacks a knife tool, where you can cut a mesh and where the cut goes through a poly you get and edge joining the edges you cut. It makes box modelling super easy. You just start off with a box and make the cuts where you need more polys and edges.
It means you don;‘t have to plane your work so well in advance.

I’ve had three starts on it. Threeis enough because life is too short to learn blender.

Exactly what I said!  And swore I’d never try it again as I’d banged my head on it several times
in the last few years.

But started with it again last October, and am getting along with it as they gave it a facelift, and am
limiting my focus to lighting, rendering, animation (fluids).  http://www.youtube.com/user/ccmcgaugh
And a site I set up to help others with it http://blenderportal.com/

Using your screenshot I’ve started modeling the wave in Carrara…...hope to have something to show
by next week.

Thanks for the link to the Joan of Arc tutorial…...will check it out!

Gah sorry Cal I didn’t see this reply :( Daz has decided to unsubscribe me from the thread ?
Hmm,.

Great you are modelling the wave! Yahhooo Heh
I had a play the other day and painted the mesh with blacksmith 3d paint rather than use procedurals.

To model the mesh try this. In vertex room drop in a cylinder hit the plus key till it has enough verticie to look round.
Delete the ends.
Turn the mesh so it is horizontal.
Look at it left and right and cut of the verticies at the bottom so you leave the bottom apex but still have enough for the lip etc,
Look at it from the front . Select the middle polys all the way round and use soft select and the scale toool to squah it in the middle.
Go to bottom biew and select the very bottom line of edge using the between selection thingy.
Then extrude these edges a few times to make the ocean.
Shape the lip by moving the verticies around.
Then add thickness.
Sorry that sounds all garbled without images!!

If you have a go at painting a texture map it this is what I found.
You need a reflection map because thw white water should have no reflection where as the green stuff will want a lot.
Also a transmap is handy to feather the lip but you don’t want the white water to be transparent but you want the green wall etc to be transparent.
Also a bump map cause the bump in the what water is different to the green stuff.
I ran into trouble because I couldn’t get transparency and alpha to work together because as soon as I turn on transparancy my alpha map in the alpha channel shows black splotches - weird.
There might be a small argument for a slight glow on the white water - to get that luminance.

All in all painting the green water (wall etc) gave really good results but I havn’t been able to get good white water yet.

I’ll post in a few days. I had good news the other day and may have an agent so I am getting other stuff ready.
Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.!!

head wax - 30 June 2012 03:52 PM

Misticwolf - 29 June 2012 07:59 PM

I’m impressed with it as it is.  But if anything, I think maybe the nose could use a small bit of work if you trying for a perfect likeness.

Shawn.

God bless.

thanks Shawn
You know, I am so impresssed byhow observant you are. When I was pulling the mesh around I forgot all about the nose! Thanks for pointing that out!

No problem.  Just trying to help.

Hey Andrew,

thanks for the mini-tut on modeling a wave! I’ll try it out asap. =)

I’ve been working on animating it, or at least the incoming swell.

Saw a great animation demo of Dynamic Cloth by PhilW…..

It reminded me of how the water surface looks when a wave comes in,
i.e. the surface rises up, but things on it, e.g. me, basically stay in place
(unless we pick it up).

I also have Phil’s excellent tutorial set, Learning Carrara 8, and found
at least 2 tuts that helped me get started.

First, I created a plain, copy pasted to duplicate it, raised the 2nd up a bit (it will be the water surface/cloth),
added a cylinder in between…...placed so the soft body would drape over it…..at the same time the cylinder
is moving between the plains…..the “cloth” seems to flow over it, though it’s just moving up as the cylinder
moves under it…...just like a wave. =)

Then selected the top plain >Modifiers>Physics>Soft Body
.This is the latest try......everything set to 100%  except Pressure = 0.

This may have been done before, but didn’t see one…..hope others will try to improve on it.
It’s not very smooth yet, but will keep trying. =)

I think I can get it to break by changing the shape of the cylinder towards the end.

For Shannon! =)

(edited to code links properly)

I think I can get it to break by changing the shape of the cylinder towards the end.

Or ....have an invisible cylinder for it to break against. =)

ps- started a new thread just for Soft Body Waves

An interesting video about the waves made for “Surf’s Up” and Siggraph.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-Wx8b5NLNE

Kendall