Exclusive: Working with Ocean and Fluids – Part 8

Introduction to the tutorial series

In this Citizen video for 3ds max, we’ll continue talking about working with ocean and fluids simulation an now it is time to start preparing first final complete scene created completely in 3ds max with standard features and some additional plug-ins.

What is covered in this part of working with ocean and fluids

In this video part of Working with Ocean and Fluids citizen series, we’ll start working at a complete scene with 3ds max. In the past we talked about all the features we need to do it, trying to figure how to use it and introducing techniques, tips and problems we can encounter. We’ll prepare the basic environment created using real scale unit to have a more precise lighting, we’ll use Final Render Ocean mesh to add the ocean mesh and simulate the water animation, so we’ll work a little bit with its parameters to find the best compromise between level of detail and amount of vertices used. Then we’ll tune the wave parameters and the ocean speed to make it more realistic and with the real scale. Talking about the rendering we’ll use Mental Ray to reach a major user base, so we’ll create a basic water material using an Arch&Design shader, and we’ll use the MR Sun&Sky to illuminate the scene. To obtain the best result we’ll play with Sky parameters and with MR Exposure Control too, tuning colors, illumination value and general image look.

Animation

We’ll work a little bit on the animation side too, so we’ll prepare the camera animation using keyframe and some noise controller to simulate object impact on the water and handy camera movement. We’ll use a box proxy to prepare the object falling inside the water, and to animate it we’ll use really simple keyframe animation.

The falling object

The object that will fall inside the water is not so important, but we’ll take a look to take care about its appereance so to not spend too much time modeling something, we’ll use the free Greeble plug-in to add details, and we’ll prepare a simple metalic material using the Arch&Design shader, and it will be perfect for our needs.

Future videos

In Part 9 we’ll continue working at 1st final scene trying to finalize it adding sprays, impact simulation and all the additional fx we need, then we’ll move forward to the 2nd final scene made using Realflow and introducing Naiad.