WIP Something something beach waves...UPDATE

This is still very much a work in progress, but I thought some of you might find an early preview interesting. I've created a single tileable block of beach with rolling waves, spray, foam, etc. This single slice of beach can be instanced to create an unbroken shoreline as long as you need it to be. Here in this test image you're seeing one block with four tiled instances. It renders suuuuper quick, too. I think this render took just over a minute on my RTX 4090. And I did one with ten instances that took just about a minute more. Eventually I'll add the actual beach sand (this one is just a placeholder) and get the materials in line, but you can already see how it's going to be in this test.

And the best part is that the only texture map for the water is a single 4k normal map, Everything else is just materials, so you'll be able to edit the the look of the water to your heart's content. So, if you've ever wanted to put your models right into the waves at the beach instead of just standing on a shore, you'll soon be able to. I'll post more updates as the project progresses.

ETA: I've finished the modeling, and have started on the materials and textures today, so I thought I'd show the progress so far. Here's an in-progress render showing the render speed on a RTX 4090. For this image, I just put the "Maui" HDRI background that comes with Daz Studio as the only light source (as well as the background image):



I didn't really line things up too well, but it works as a proof of concept anyway, ha ha. And here is the finished render. Took about six minutes with two blocks total. Not too shabby.