In this Blender 2.6 video tutorial, we take a look at using the Ocean Sim modifier in conjunction with the Cycles render engine to create a gorgeous ocean scene. This tutorial covers the entire process needed to create the final result, including generation of the ocean, the sky background, rendering in Cycles, and setting up the composite nodes to create the final effect.
Note: I mixed up during the tutorial, and wrongly attributed the Sky Texture. The actual author is David Keyes, and the texture comes from his sky pack that you can download here: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?224065
Download our Sky Texture pack here: part 1 | part 2
lol! it just crashed my display driver with the memory usage from the video and cycles render. hahahah
Hey Jonathan, do you have a metal desk?
Nope, hard wood. ANy particular reason?
There is a booming sound in the beginning of the tutorial that sounds exactly like the sound the desk my brother uses when you bump it.
My desk is wood too, That is, I built it from scrap wood.
Hey there! I’ve got a question, if you were to add a ship to the whole scene, what would be the best way to add the ripples generated by the hull of the ship? i thoght about using the fluid simulator but results are not quite what i was hoping for, so i thought of asking to a pro before wasting more time…
I would recommend using the waves option with Dynamic Paint: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Physics/Dynamic_Paint
That’d be a good tutorial. Maybe one on dynamic paint and the foam/normals option you started to touch on in this tutorial.
Yesss! Will try it out as soon as i can! my scene was looking terribly fake without, i hope to make it look a little more realistic now. Thanks a lot, and I’ll let you know how it turns out!
Does Cycles have an Alpha pass? I see that a Z pass can be added now thru Cycles, but I still need to render out an alpha.exr from the internal engine right?
Yep it has an alpha pass, it’s just set to always render the alpha.
I was trying to figure it out so I could do the tutorial without the extra internal engine steps. But I just couldn’t figure out the layers and what not to make it work. Guess I need to learn the layers settings…
How i loop de simulation?
Heys, i’m getting a problem in 2.62. When I go to render as an image the waves don’t show up. What could I do to work around this or even fix it.
Is your modifier disabled during Render? It’s the camera icon in the modifier panel.
Well I tried that but it seemed not to do anything different in the render image. I still get a gray box where the ocean should be.. When I display it as rendered in the 3D view port it works. I’ve watched this video a few times and I don’t think I have anything wrong but I could have messed up somewhere.
Hi Ben,
Can you take a screenshot of your modifier and render settings?
Yea I can would you like me to submit it as an image or..?
Hey, what kind of system requirements would this need?
My computer is pretty new with a good graphics card, etc, but once you get stuff like water baking and a bunch of stuff on scene, it tends to slow down quite a bit.
Just wanted to ask before I got half way through this tut and couldn’t finish it because of my computer. :3
when I UV map the skydome, the inside of the cylinder doesn’t get mapped, only the outside. Why is that?
Amazing tutorial!
I made a short animation with the help of this tutorial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN7MPGWKip8
I had toremove the node that helped blend the sky and the ocean together because it didn’t work with the animation. I was wondering if anyone would have an idea how to make them work in an animation?
Hello Daniel. Cool animated ocean, rendered with cycle. Do you have a tutorial for me how to do this.
Thanks
Karl
the node editor is really scary!!! help me!! i don’t get it!
Hi there,
Maybe these two tutorials will help:
Intro to Cycles: http://cgcookie.com/blender/2011/09/16/introduction-blender-cycles-render-engine/
Intro to texturing with Cycles: http://cgcookie.com/blender/2012/02/29/introduction-texturing-cycles-in-blender/
Having trouble with the openexr multilayer rgba alpha image file.
When I get to the point of the two scene copies, render out this alpha openexr multilayer rgba image all is fine until I go back to the CYCLES copy of the scene and into the compositor.
I add an image node, load up that openexr multilayer rgba image only to find I just get COMBINED & DEPTH Passes/outputs. No sign of Image, Z or Alpha.
As of today I am using a latest build from trunk ( built with Cmake and MSVS exp ).
Any ideas on this? Maybe I am missing a setting or things have changed since this tute was done?
Aidan
OK,
For anyone passing this way who finds same openexr multilayer rgba alpha image file issue – I think I solved it?
It would appear that since this tutorial went online Blender has changed a bit.
To sort out this openexr alpha thing it seems ( as of 21/4/2012 ) that we no longer use multilayer openexr. Instead we use openexr normal and save the image file as openexr, rgba, zip lossless and enable Z buffer.
Now, maybe in another while things may change again. But as of the above date no need to use a multilayer openexr file, just openexr with th right settings is enough.
Aidan
hello jonathan thanks for this great tutorial!
i have just a little question i make a really good image in compositing mode but i can’t export like an animation with ocean cycles so my question how do you to export like an animation thanks for your time and your answer.
ps:sorry for my english i’m french bye anthony
Hi Lauvin,
You can save out an animation with Cycles the same way as the Blender Internal render engine. First you need to set your Start/End frame and Output filepath and format. Then just press the “Animation” button. This will render each frame with the number of samples designated in the Integrator tab. If you’re doing any compositing also just make sure “Do Composite” is enabled in the Post Processing section of the Render properties.
Cheers,
Jonathan
Jonathan I was wondering is there a way to use this technique to create a backdrop for a 3d movie and animate the water to move and what not. I was hoping you could point in the right dirction for some info on something like that.
Thx again,
Jeremy
Yep that would work quite well. You can render out the animation by setting the start/end frames, the output format, and then pressing “Animation” in the render properties.
-Jonathan
thx again Jonathan, CG Cookie has been a great help to myself and our little time out here in Massachusetts.
Let’s hope this is easy (I’m 10 years old)…
So long as you’re dedicated and have a will to learn your age should be no barrier at all! Don’t let your young age ever discourage you; many of us got started at a young age. I guarantee you learn faster than many people right now
-Jonathan
Thanks forn the tip!
And I have a Mac. I don’t have CPU.
Thanks Jonathan for a good tutorial.
This is my first try. I think I understand every single step but got confused why I (Not) got a animated ocean out of this.
In the middle of your tutorial you tell me to press Alt+A and play the animated ocean. No problem.
Then I change from Blender Internal to Blender Cycle Samples 1000 and Full Global Illumination and then press Animation button. Blender render first 1000 samples then 1000 for each frame 250. Something strange.
Can I make animated ocean with cycle or not. Dont look like
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/14272
Thanks
Karl
Hi Spender,
You most definitely can render the animation in Cycles. The behavior your seeing is actually correct; it must render the designated samples (in this case 1000) for every frame of the animation. This can take quite a while but is just the way it works. If you want some tips on speeding up your Cycles renders then check out this page: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/Reducing_Noise
Cheers,
Jonathan
Hello Jonathan and thanks for your reply. OK I doing the right thing. Perfect. I check out your tutorial how to cut rendertime.
Thanks
Karl
This is the last experiment but still rendered in Blender Internal.
I tried to parent the red pole with watersurface by select 1 +3 vertexes so that the pole follow with the watersurface but this dont work.
https://vimeo.com/43368949
I’m going through your tutorial, and I think the depth might have something to do with how deep the base of the wave is. Instead of the height of the wave, it seems to affect the dept of the base of the wave. I played with it and noticed it seemed to change.
Hey, I have a question. I know there’s something I must be missing here.
When I get to the part when you add the sky image in the UV editor, I try to do the same thing, but when I add the image, I don’t see it projected onto the cylinder. It’s like it’s in the UV editor, but not on the object. What am I doing wrong?
I am sure this is probably a dumb question, but when I try to render the water without the sky to get the correct alpha, all I get is a total black image. I have gone through the same portion of the tutorial (right around 39 minutes) several times and still can not figure out what I am doing wrong. It is like it is rendering the entire image as an alpha with the water as well. Any help would be greatly appreciated
For some reason when you add the material and u make the surface type to emmision and u add the color = texture(about 30 minutes)for me it is not rendering the texture I added!However if I change the Viewport shading to textured I can see it, but not on rendered!
Any help?
Thanks!
am trying to learn blender for a year now and still there is alot of things that i don’t know how to do it like composite the image i really couldn’t do it can u please tell me how can i learn blender and do things on my own rather than just following tutorials ?
Awesome, what you need to do it pick a task and a subject:
such as modeling -> your computer, and start working on various little things without the guidance of tutorials and you will find yourself really showing how much you have learnt
-Alex
Doesn’t work. With the alpha image, there’s no alpha output! PLEASE HELP
I haven’t watched this tutorial personally so not sure what the alpha image is doing but I believe you want to check RGB to Intensity in the texture settings.
-Alex
Consideration: The depth slider could refer to the depth of the water at the scene. The waves would respond differently in fifty units of depth than it would with 200.
every time i start any rendering or play any animations in blender, all my moving objects, even the ocean, start out moving really slowly, how do i fix this, it would be a problem if,say, i wanted to make a shaky camera effect in a first person shooter or interactive story.
Basically your scene will only play through as fast as your computer can process it.
I suggest turning off double sided on all objects, enable VBO’s, and set the playback speed to real time not play every frame
-Alex
what i meant is, it will play at the speed the animation is supposed to play at, but it will start out slow and slowly accellerate to the normal speed, i know my computer can handle this because during the animation i still have planty of resources, its when im handling over 6000 collisions in the physics engine that it gets slow.
sorry for double posting, my internet is whats slow, and when i clicked the leave comment button i saw a typo and tried to fix it before it sent and it sent twice.
Ohhhh, ok so look in your graph editor, you will see some curvy lines, blender is giving you some lead in and lead out.
and don’t worry about double posts I can remove those
-Alex
that got it, and one last thing, lets say i got a cube to fall in the physics engine, then rendered it, how do i get it to fall at the same speed and acceleration as it did in the physics test (when you press p in the game engine)
What about if you wanted to composite a REAL model ship in the ocean? Is it possible to do that (adding reflection in the water, generating ripples)?
It certainly is, you need to work with the compositor and have a 3d place holder for the boat.
-Alex
Alright, thanks! I’m just getting started with animating/compositing in blender.
hey well i got stuck at the part when you had put the image on the cylinder, i had done what you did but it didnt work.
I have the same problem (using v2.66.1) .. unable to see UV image on the cylinder. Does anyone know of a workaround please?
Can you post a pic of the problem, or a blend file?
that way I can see what is going wrong.
-Alex
Thanks, I got lucky experimenting with the unwrapping options and it works now, the new problem is that the colour of the Ocean is not at all how it appears in the tutorial.. it’s reflecting the sky but looks like grey milk. I’ll continue to experiment with settings, but would appreciate any tips too!
Hi Alex,
here is the screenshot:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1t2h6dhzy8xlom5/Blender.%20Ocean%20Surface.%20Applying%20Skymap%20Issue.jpg
And here is the .blend file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6lq47pfkt34e5n1/Ocean%20Surface.blend
I’m on Blender v.2.66.1 r55078
Hope, you’ll be able to give a hand.
Wait Filbadop what did u do when u did the unwrapping? cuz i cant see the image on the cylinder and i am using version 2.65?
Hi Martin,
Unfortunately I was trying all kinds of ways to make it work, and don’t remember what worked in the end, but I definitely unwrapped the cylinder using all the different options, and found that the view needed to be right, so Num5 Num1 and then unwrap cylinder projection.
Ok, Thanks alot! ill try it out to see what happens, and if it doesnt work ill just find out another way. But thanks for the response!