Devin Johnston Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 I'm trying to simulate a cigar boat moving about 50mph through the water; the first thing that came to mind was to use reactor water to simulate this. I found a tutorial online which laid out each step and I followed it exactly, the results were less than spectacular and created only the most minimal of wakes. The whole process seems to be setup for small scale situations and not for water objects that are several miles wide. Is reactor water capable of reacting to a speed boat properly in this environment or is it simply to much? Can anyone help with this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Victor Erthal Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 i've done a few shots like that recently. first you need to set the scale right. the size of the boat, the speed etc. Then i animated the boat manually with dummies. one for the linear motion, one for the bobbing and one for the rotation. used a simplified version of the boat to create the wakes. There is one cool trick if you are not happy about the scale of the wake. on the space warp link, you can set a scale, so it affects more the water plane. That is not enough if you want it to look photoreal. you are going to have quite a bit of work to do with particles to simulate foam, splashes etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dean@pikcells Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 i think theres a boat wake plugin for max somewhere. very simple to use. how realistic do you need it? is it for an animation? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 28, 2009 Author Share Posted January 28, 2009 Yes it's an animation and I'd like to get as photo real as possible. The other option I've tried is to use a plane with an animated noise modifier on it; this gives me pretty good waves. Then I use the same noise modifier and apply it to the boat path which more or less gives me the bobbing motion but it's stiff and I haven't figured out how to smooth out the motion. I've attached some particle systems to the bow of the boat with the same noise modifier applied and it produces descent looking spray. I'm still not sure how to do the wake, I've read some people used animated displacement maps but I haven't figured that out either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dean@pikcells Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 i would animate the boat separately, as the rhythm of the boat bouncing would be different to the waves. its probably easiest to animate that using key frames, and a spline. as for the wakes, how close do you see the boat? i think that plugin i was on about is part of Blur's plugins they released a while back. what render engine are you using? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 28, 2009 Author Share Posted January 28, 2009 I'm using Vray and you get pretty close to the boat so it needs to look pretty good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandmanNinja Posted January 29, 2009 Share Posted January 29, 2009 I did a boat animation, in mental ray, but used particles for the foam. it worked a treat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 29, 2009 Author Share Posted January 29, 2009 Anything you can share? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 29, 2009 Author Share Posted January 29, 2009 Victor, I've gone back to a simpler reactor water at a smaller scale 500'x500' and I'm getting better results I think because the mesh is denser. Anyway my boat moves through the water at about 50 MPH which take about 180 frames, the wake looks great up until about frame 120 where it completely stops generating a wake. Any idea why it would stop like that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 29, 2009 Author Share Posted January 29, 2009 Ok I know why the wake stops it's because when I run the simulation it only stores 101 key frames, the big question is why? I can't see any setting that control the number of key frames it stores or where the range would be set. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen Thomas Posted January 29, 2009 Share Posted January 29, 2009 Go to utilities panel on the right hand side of your screen and click the reactor button. Under the preview and animation rollout there are settings for number of frames etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 29, 2009 Author Share Posted January 29, 2009 Wonderful, that did it thank you my friend!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Warner Posted January 29, 2009 Share Posted January 29, 2009 I'd love to see the end result, if possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 29, 2009 Author Share Posted January 29, 2009 Sure I'll post something before the end of the day but this is something I'm going to work on for a while so it will probably take some time to get everything right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Forreal Posted January 29, 2009 Share Posted January 29, 2009 I'd love to see the end result, if possible.+1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 29, 2009 Author Share Posted January 29, 2009 This is what it looks like so far, I'm pretty happy with it except there's no white foam but I'm still working on it. I'd post a preview animation except I can't find a site that will host video for free so stills will have to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Forreal Posted January 30, 2009 Share Posted January 30, 2009 i have no idea how you'd do it but i think it needs the foam for credibilty. great effort so far though. i had a look at this to compare http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pK42JRxK13M Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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