Oceans

Maya
1

This is a noob question regarding oceans...

I need to create a photoreal ocean.
I know Maya 7 has some presets in the visor and I've played around with them, but they don't look too convincing to me.

Should I be using some 3rd party tool? What is currently the most photoreal tool available to create an ocean in Maya?

Just point me in the right direction and I'll do the rest. Thanks!

2

hey

create a nurbs plane with 10 x 10 patches or as many as you like apply a dielectric shader to, add a 2d ocean shader to the displacement. add an image based lighting sphere with a sky on the top half, and a ramp from light blue to dark blue.
middle key and top key being white apply this ramp to the colour gain of the environment sphere image.
tweak with the ocean settings and turn on final gather also add some physical water fog and play with the seetings also, thats it really.

have a look on simply mayas site I have posted my underwater shark scene there.

hope this helps

Andy Gee

3

you can have good result with maya ocean, i did one not bad for a movie.
it can be a bit odd when you are very far or very close, or if you are on the top... but you can ad ramps in the displacements, blend few textures to break the synthetic look..

also you have an other solution to have a nice ocean in maya that's vue d'esprit. the last versions have a connection with maya, you can export your ocean and lighting in maya.
The results are not bad at all.

You can see some renders on vue website, you have quite the same through maya

good luck
Jaz