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Author Topic: Blender Ocean simulator powered wave textures  (Read 53784 times)

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Herra Tohtori

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Blender Ocean simulator powered wave textures
« on: March 02, 2012, 09:59:36 AM »

DOWNLOAD v.0.5: https://www.mediafire.com/file/fd5h24mzgpz7aa1/

Updating this thread on 2022-11-09. I have been absent from IL-2 modding for a long time, but here's a small update on this mod. Earlier versions have a small error that causes a very slight "jolt" in the wave animation, due to the images being shifted by a couple of pixels. This version fixes that and the animation should be smoother.

However I am not up to date on how 1946 modding has progressed, what mod packs are in use and what kind of file structure they use. So be advised, depending on the mod pack you use - this may or may not work directly from JSGME. Probably does, but you probably want to test it to make sure (i.e. disable older versions of my ocean wave mod, then activate this and check how the waves look like).


OLD VERSION description below. I have also streamlined the process to just one version, since A, B, C, and D versions below were never very different from each other.

Quote
Now JSGME compatible!

B version is the same as A, but with stronger normal map.

D version is the same as C, but with stronger normal maps.

The main difference between A and C is how the wave animation is looped. I would appreciate opinions on whether anyone has any preferences, or if anyone can see any difference between the versions, even.

I included Avala's high resolution foam texture in this package.


----------------

I tried to search for water mods but the latest/best I could find was Carsmaster's water mod, which is great but I found myself requiring a bit more realism in the water surfaces. If someone else has already done this work for me, all the better...


So, I embarked on a path to figure out how the ocean simulator works in Blender. Turns out it works great, and although you need to use some rather unorthodox means to get meaningful output from it, it does look absolutely gorgeous. With the help of someone on another modding community, I was able to harness the power of wave simulator and output it into a tileable height map. The big problem is, of course, making a looping animation out of that data - easier said than done, I found.


Currently, I have a set of textures build in Blender (and processed in GIMP) that looks quite great in still screenshots; however, there is a supremely annoying "tick" in the animation that I need to take a look into, but I am fairly confident that I can build an animation that runs smoothly and provides quite a bit more realistic - I probably made a mistake at some point of assembling the frames together and there was a "gap" of sorts left between some frames, or something equally silly.

That said, even though the live action quality is not yet satisfactory, this thing is producing some quite impressive bullshots:


Good weather waves are like lazy, rolling swells that glint in the sunlight.









When the weather fouls up, the waves pick it up, with a good amount of foamy crests. I think the rough weather looks even better at this point than the good weather waves.













And, finally, the ultimate "cover image" style screenshot...





To-Do:

1. Fix animation choppyness. Rather work-intensive.

2. Test different normal map intensities to see how they affect reflectivity.

3. Get input about the scale of the waves.


Third one requires the help of anyone interested in giving me some feedback. Are the waves too big or too small? Both in wavelength and amplitude (wave height)? Do they glint too much or too little? Am I doing it right or wrong? Any feedback you can give will be valuable (especially in keeping up my interest to finish this thing). If there's enough interest, then I might even hand out current version for testing, although I'd rather wait until I've fixed the animation.

Cheers.


Obsolete links preserved for the record:


v0.3: https://www.mediafire.com/?l40y12pspdnqzi6
v0.2: derp upload https://www.mediafire.com/?6zlxctrgan9p8zu
v0.1: https://www.mediafire.com/?hozooaqn2agn7p2
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sputnikshock

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Re: Blender Ocean simulator powered wave textures
« Reply #1 on: March 02, 2012, 10:14:02 AM »

Wow! Nice!!
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Sonny Tucson

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Re: Blender Ocean simulator powered wave textures
« Reply #2 on: March 02, 2012, 10:23:14 AM »

Hello Herra.

Congratulations !.

That looks super. I never managed to get Carsmaster stuff working in my install ( Waves are moving step by step , if you see what I mean ).
Yours look just super. As far as I am concerned ( i am not a modder, so excuse me ) I always found that the waves in the game had not enough amplitude AND height.
For me it looks , by nice weather , like  I am rowing on a calm lake, that is not that realistic , isn't it ?. So I'd like to see real rough see , you know a real living sea (like the Channel for example ).Of course I can imagine that  it could be difficult to have rough sea on the Channel and in the same time a "flat" mediterranean sea.

Anyway , your efforts are superb and I thank you already for your work to come.

Long live Il-2

Sonny Tucson. :)
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Kopfdorfer

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Re: Blender Ocean simulator powered wave textures
« Reply #3 on: March 02, 2012, 10:38:24 AM »

Really interesting and promising work Herra!

Might be worth considering the differentiation of ocean vs river into the mix , so that open sea conditions do not occur on inland waterways. Not that I have a clue what that would entail in terms of either current game code or required changes.
Call this a pie in the sky comment.
Best of luck on this.

Kopfdorfer
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Herra Tohtori

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Re: Blender Ocean simulator powered wave textures
« Reply #4 on: March 02, 2012, 11:40:27 AM »

Thanks! I'm working on the animation right now, it's looking quite good so far.

Here's an image of how the ocean simulator looks in the Blender before I rendered it into height maps:



It's a damn shame that we can only use 256^2 sized water textures! I'm making these textures in 1024^2, however, so at least I'll have a rather high quality water texture to drop on some other games that might use similar system (and, considering the ubiquity of height- and normalmaps, many games would likely accept these...).
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HundertzehnGustav

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Re: Blender Ocean simulator powered wave textures
« Reply #5 on: March 02, 2012, 12:42:06 PM »

Hellcat over tanker looks damn perfect to me... for a crappy weather day on the sea.

storm... could be worse? but how...?

larger waves (spacing + height) but the choppyness looks good - foam in large spots and small lines...  :)

rolling waves, the picture with the ships, and the rolling waves looks very peaceful. you capture a good, tranquil mood with that.
the reflections of the sun will underline it well.

I am curious, interested.
to compare... could you... post a few screenshots - ?

to get a better idea of what the waves do look like... instead of this approach of flying over -
would it not be better to create a reference point?

I am sorry, i sound confused, i am.

Could you post a bunch of screenshots. Identical screenshots.
you see your tanker Picture? the one with teh hellcat over the bridge?
It shows the waves spacing and color well compared to an object we often encounter on the sea.
can you take a few pictures, (static Tanker/DD/Cruiser) in FMB + camera nearby), always the same image, always the same time, always the same cloud height (2000m, so their effect on the image s minimal) taken under different weather styles?

the result would be the same image, but showing the differences you made, better.

this is good... i often fly over the sea, but i have not wondered about the waves much so far.
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HundertzehnGustav

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Re: Blender Ocean simulator powered wave textures
« Reply #6 on: March 02, 2012, 12:45:38 PM »

save the 1024square bitmaps too.
there are some russian Boys over at aviaskins that have a 109 and a Mig-3 wear 2048square Bitmap textures.
if i recall correctly. or were they already pushing to 4096?
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Flying H

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Re: Blender Ocean simulator powered wave textures
« Reply #7 on: March 02, 2012, 12:46:02 PM »

Very impressive, hope you keep your interest up  'til you hand it over to us!
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Slink

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Re: Blender Ocean simulator powered wave textures
« Reply #8 on: March 02, 2012, 01:02:06 PM »

Jesus, looks fantastic, gotta have this, I'm a total sucker for the environmental (SH), nice big swell please, water normally looks like a duck pond...
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Herra Tohtori

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Re: Blender Ocean simulator powered wave textures
« Reply #9 on: March 02, 2012, 02:12:45 PM »

Well, did a little testing. Animation is perfectly fine, but the game for some reason insists on switching point on animation on random intervals.

I have no idea why it does that...
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magot

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Re: Blender Ocean simulator powered wave textures
« Reply #10 on: March 02, 2012, 02:18:21 PM »

really big storm - hurricane, for inspiration, but this not standard storm sea waves

altitude 400 feets


altitude 200 feets


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Herra Tohtori

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Re: Blender Ocean simulator powered wave textures
« Reply #11 on: March 02, 2012, 02:38:53 PM »

There's only two kinds of seas - the good weather, and the slightly choppy weather.

Moreover, both use the same set of textures as far as I can tell, and the only thing that changes is the intensity of the normal map as well as the amplitude of the height map (waves become higher).


After a brief bit of additional testing, I have found out that the water is also "living its own life" independent of the textures I am giving it. It is sort of reversing its own waveform periodically, which looks absolutely atrocious.

Does anyone have any idea how to prevent this annoying behaviour?

I shall upload a test version soon, but unless this strange waving is nullified, I don't know if there'll be much use for this modification. The water's behaviour just ruins it...
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