"Begin somewhere: you cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do."
-- Liz Smith


Ocean Waves
Purpose: To create realistic ocean waves in Bryce.

Programs Used: Bryce 4. This will also work with Bryce 3.1, as the new "fractal landscape" option in the terrain editor is what is used for the ocean. But note, the file download is Bryce 4 in format.

When it comes to creating ocean waves, the most realistic way to do this is by using terrains instead of water planes - the reason is simple: a water plane provides no height. The idea behind using terrains for this effect is very simple; the real challenge you will find is texturing the terrains so they give a realistic appearance.

Terrain Setup Begin with an empty scene (deleting the ground terrain), and create a new terrain. From the terrain editor, I'd recommend a resolution of at least 512, but I almost always use 1024 for the foreground terrain. From the Fractal pulldown, choose Ridged Multifactal and generate a new terrain. With Bryce 3.1, use CTRL-click on the Fractal button to produce the Ridge Multifractal Terrain within the terrain editor. Because the results are random, you may not be completely satisified with how the terrain will look as waves; so you may need to return to this step and regenerate a new terrain until a suitable one is found. Always render test the terrain though, as the results will often surprise you.

Adjusting Terrain Height Place the camera and terrain for the scene. This terrain will be the main one in front of the camera, and will later be replicated for waves in the distance. Either reduce the height of the terrain by dragging on the top resize control from the Edit palette, or numerically adjust the height from the Y value in the Edit: 3D Transformations box (begin with a number approximate 30%). Now, we need to duplicate and stagger them across the scene to give depth; you cannot simply enlarge the main terrain to cover the whole scene as the waves will lose definition.

Overhead View Of Terrains. With the camera and initial terrain placed effectively, duplicate the terrain and stagger them like the image to the left. I put a large island (visible on the left of the finished image). You will also note the use of a water plane just in front of the camera: this is explained during the texturing phase below. Generally, you do not need to tile these seamlessly since they blend together well and will all have the same texture. You'll note I have many gaps in the water terrains visible from an overhead view, but these will not be visible when rendering. In fact, some are moved intentionally to make a crest of a wave visible or give the illusion of a lull.

Now for the fun part: texturing. This may be the most time consuming stage. The first thing to do is to place the sun and adjust the atmosphere the way you'd like it. This is because the sun and atmosphere control how your waves will look to such a high degree that if you later change any setting, you'll find your waves will look less than desireable.

With you sky settings adjusted, select all of your water terrains. I'd suggest starting with a default water texture such as Carribean Resort or Nighttime Lake. This will give you a good starting point. You'll need to adjust the amount of diffusion and ambience to set up your scene, as well as transparency and reflectivity. This is the process of rendering, adjusting, rendering, etc. Try to change only one value at a time, such as transparency or diffusion, so you know what type of effect you are having and your results will be less random.

Because the default ground plane made the water look overly dark, I deleted it and added a water plane. This added a lightness to the water and also fills in gaps in the horizon where there are no water terrains. The underlying water plane can then be adjusted to control reflectivity and transparency, which will greatly change the appearance of the waves. The adverse effect, as you can imagine, is increased render time - but the results are worth it.

With the waves looking like I wanted them to, I added a spot light to the island to give the effect of the sun striking the side, adding depth. Below is my final image, created in in less than an hour. It contains a lot of small "flaws" but it's a great starting point for a larger image, such as The Rocinante.





About downloading this scene: it's big. I reduced the terrain resolutions, but it's still a whopper. So here are two files. The first is a version that does not have the replicated terrains: only the main terrain. So when you download the file, you'll see what it looks like before the additional terrains are added, and you'll have to replicate them loosely like I did above.

The second file is the whole kit'n kaboodle. Please only download this if you have some dire need for it, as I may need to pull it to reduce bandwidth ... thanks! And if you tinker with it and produce a nice scene, let me know, I'd love to check it out!

Reduced Scene, Ocean-Small.zip (1.2 meg)
Whole Scene, OceanWaves.zip (20 meg)